catman
Joined: 18 Jul 2004
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 Posted: Thu Oct 02, 2014 5:51 pm Post subject: Is North Korea still digging tunnels to the South? |
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-- Gen. Hahn Sung-Chu never believed North Korea could dig a tunnel that reached Seoul -- until now.
Standing inside a basement of an apartment block in the heart of the capital, the former two-star general in the South Korean military says, "This is a kind of invasion, North Korean soldiers working underneath us."
Hahn says residents had complained of underground vibrations, but the subway does not run beneath them.
He says dowsers detected three tunnels, 13 to 16 feet (4 to 5 meters) wide at a depth of up to 39 feet (12 meters). His team drilled two bore holes to lower a camera, but before they could, they detected two underground explosions and their drill holes were blocked. Hahn is certain that North Korean soldiers were working beneath their feet, protecting the tunnel.
Four tunnels from the North have been found in all, although none since 1990. The South Korean Defense Ministry still officially looks for them as it believes there may be 20 in all, but the budget is small and tunnel hunters believe it is merely a token effort. North Korea has said the tunnels were not for invasion, but part of its mining industry.
While the Defense Ministry believes there may be up to several tunnels dug under the Demilitarized Zone, it is convinced that none would reach as far as Seoul. It believes that Pyongyang would not be able to dig more than 6 miles (10 kilometers) from the DMZ -- the heavily fortified border -- because of the Imjin River. Seoul's northwestern boundary is about 25 miles (40 kilometers) from the DMZ.
"To dig tunnels tens of kilometers, it must be angled properly," says Defense Ministry spokesman Kim Min-Seok. "There is a huge amount of groundwater in the Korean Peninsula, so water and soil have to be removed consistently. South Korea and the U.S. have always taken aerial photographs, and we found no evidence of this."
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