North Korea pumps money into military

SEOUL — North Korea is spending as much as 40 percent of its gross domestic product on its military, including its nuclear-weapons program, to give its 1.2-million-man army key advantages over better-armed U.S. and South Korean forces, said Army Gen. Leon J. LaPorte, the U.S. Forces Korea commander.

North Korea’s conventional forces — including the world’s largest special operations commando force and 12,000 artillery pieces near the border — pose a continuing “credible military threat,” but have some limitations, Gen. LaPorte said.

The four-star general said North Korea, despite its poor economy, continues to invest between 35 percent and 40 percent of its gross domestic product in what Pyongyang calls a “military first” policy — building up military forces at the expense of the civilian sector.

“They are making, primarily, their investments in the asymmetrical arena,” he said in an interview with The Washington Times at his headquarters in the Yongsan military garrison.

“They realize that they can never invest enough money in their navy and air force to compete [with U.S. and South Korean forces]. So they are investing in asymmetrical capabilities.”

Asymmetrical-warfare weapons are those that provide a military advantage over more advanced militaries, such as that of the United States. In North Korea, that includes nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and missiles to deliver them at both short and long distances.

Currently, North Korea can fire missiles throughout South Korea and at bases in Japan.

Gen. LaPorte said one major fear is that North Korea’s continuing work on nuclear arms will lead the country to eventually “weaponize their weapons-grade material on missiles.”

If that were to occur, “now you have a threat not just to South Korea, you have a threat to the region and the international community,” he said.

U.S. officials have said the recent discovery that Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan provided Chinese-language warhead design documents to Libya as part of a nuclear-weapons and missile program has raised new worries that North Korea soon will have nuclear arms small enough to be fitted on missiles.

Six-way nuclear talks with North Korea, aimed at negotiating the dismantling of its weapons program, have produced no breakthroughs despite several rounds of discussions with China, the United States, Japan, South Korea and Russia.

Pyongyang threw another wrench into the latest round of inter-Korea negotiations, suddenly boycotting Cabinet-level talks with South Korea scheduled to start in Seoul today.

The communist state said it was angry at the mass defection of hundreds of North Koreans to the South last week. The South Korean Unification Ministry said that it deeply regretted Pyongyang’s decision and added, “We urge the North side to come to the talks at the earliest possible date.”

Gen. LaPorte said the North Koreans are investing heavily in deploying and building missiles, and have an arsenal of more than 800 missiles.

Asked what worries him, Gen. LaPorte said he is concerned about the continuing missile development by the North.

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