On Jan. 21, 1968, 31 highly trained and motivated North Korean commandos belonging to the DPRK’s "Unit 124" came within 300 meters of Cheong Wa Dae on a mission to decapitate the South Korean leadership and spark a revolution that Pyongyang hoped would lead to a unified Korean Peninsula under communist rule. In the firefight that ensured, 27 were killed, three managed to escape and one was taken prisoner (and would later become a Christian minister in Seoul).
As you can imagine, this pissed off the South Koreans, then led by President Park Chung-hee. Just how much it pissed off the South Koreans, however, would be revealed by former ROK Air Force Chief of Staff Jang Ji-ryang in a column in the Nov. 14 edition of the Korea Defense Daily (and re-reported in the Kyunghyang Shinmun). According to Jang, then KCIA director (and later chicken feed) Kim Hyung-wook pressed the Air Force to form a special commando unit to attack Kim Il-sung’s residence in Pyongyang in retaliation for the North Korean raid on Cheong Wa Dae.
Kim advised the formation of a unit composed mostly of hardened criminals, including six or seven condemned men, who would be promised freedom should they return from their mission alive. The men would have been airdropped into Pyongyang for their assault on Casa del Great Leader.
In accordance with Kim’s suggestion, the Air Force began training in April a commando unit in the mountains about 100 km. southeast of Seoul for the job. It also composed a two-wing strike force and drew up plans to bomb the presidential palace in Pyongyang.
At the time, much of the U.S. 7th Fleet was gathered in the East Sea and the waters off Wonsan, North Korea in response to the kidnapping of the USS Pueblo on Jan. 23.
Vengeance would not be Seoul’s, however, thanks to opposition from the U.S. military. Jang said U.S. military opposition to a South Korean retaliatory strike on Pyongyang was due to not only concern about the safety of the 30 or so crew members of the USS Pueblo, who were still captive in North Korea, but also out of concern that Washington would be unable to sustain wars both in Vietnam and Korea at the same time.
This would mark the second recent disclosure of the U.S. "encouraging" South Korea from retaliating militarily to North Korean provocations.
It should also be noted that the South Korean commando unit in question was separate from the now infamous Unit 684, about which director Kang Woo-suk’s outstanding 2003 film Silmido (watch it if you haven’t seen it) is based.
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There is a more detailed Korean-language account of the raid and the survival of Kim Sin-jo in a Sindonga article from the late 90s.
In the article Kim wants to point out that he was not “captured” (saengp’o) but that he surrendered (t’uhang). After the attack failed, and the commandos tried to escape and were engaged in firefights, he decided to surrender, and threw away all his weapons and suicide explosives.
“Kim advised the formation of a unit composed mostly of hardened criminals, including six or seven condemned men, who would be promised freedom should they return from their mission alive.”
Is it just me, or does this resemble the plot for a really bad action movie with Jean Claude Van Damme?
Indeed, life imitates fiction “madne0″. “The Dirty Dozen” comes to mind. Nowadays if they should try it again, they could send some of the hardened spammers from Korea Telecom but then I don’t think internet viagra would kill anyone.
The reason was that the US cannot fight two wars at the same time. This guarantee of fighting two fronts was and is very important for the survival of Korean Republic.
At the beginning of Iraq campaign, the US (I believe it was Rumsfeld) promised to Korea that it had capability to fight two fronts simultaneously. But, everybody knows that is a fiction. Korea will be abandoned.
NK and China know this fact as well. When the US is busy fighting a war in the middle East(Iran?), NK will attack SK and win. SK soldiers will run away as they had done during Korean War. Some loonies like Jeong Ddong and Kim DaeJoong will think it is an opportunity for two Koreas to unite. They may tell the troops to ceasefire and welcome their breatheren from North. The entire peninsula will belong to KJI or his heir.
Only way to escape this certain destruction is to unite the whole country under strong anti-North and anti-China resolve. But, alas, today’s youths thinks that China is friendly and they can live under the communism practiced by China. What they are going to get is NK’s communism. You can bet on that.
I hope you’re wrong about that scenario, Baduk, because the U.S. might just use the “shortcut” of dumping a bunch of nukes on Pyongyang since its short on personnel over here, which would could have unpleasant side effects. Anyway, the next presidential election in Korea will probably be decided on economic issues because everyone’s sick of the ideologues in office now and want some real leadership to get the economy back on track.
Michael,
If the US did not use nukes in VietNam, would she use them in Korea? No way. Next Korean war will be another conventional war, with the USFK doing minimum, if any. Don’t blame them, Korea brought it upon itself.
Korea must realize dire situation it is in. Next election will decide Korea’s fate.
Hope you’re right about the no nukes–I’m fairly sure that the fake “leftists” will be gone in the next election, although I wouldn’t bet won on it. It just seems like the economy, which Roh and Co. keep mucking up, will be their undoing.
I’ve been trying to get my hands on Silmido, but Netflix won’t say when they’ll get it back (if they ever) and it’s still saved on my list. Anybody know where to find that?