At 23:03 5-8-01 -0400, John Giorgis wrote:
>You may not be aware of this Jeroen, but a desperate North Korean assault
>on South Korea is considered by America's top strategists to be one of our
>most serious military risks. As Dan M. pointed out, the North Koreans have
>an enormous army. It is not inconceivable that the DPRK could become so
>desperate for food and supplies that the would launch an invasion, rather
>than risking the complete implosion of their State. In such a scenario,
>landmines may be the only hope of preventing Seoul from being completely
>razed by the invaders.
Below are links to a few websites that debunk the claim that landmines are
necessary in Korea.
http://www.calebrossiter.com/korealm.html:
"The North Koreans got a taste of what a future war against the U.S. and
South Korea would be like in 1999, when their patrol boats attacked South
Korean patrol boats in disputed territorial waters. The battle pitted
binocular-sighted, hand-turned guns against lethal modern radar and
computer-operated cannons: within minutes, seven North Korean gunboats were
knocked out of service."
"The U.S. military claims that its arsenal of 800,000 antipersonnel and
250,000 anti-vehicle landmines is a key component in any defense of South
Korea. The U.S. plans to use these mines, stored in warehouses in the
South, to slow attacks by North Korean massed infantry. But will these
mines even be deployed? A cursory examination of U.S. mine deployment plans
show that it would take 1,100 five-ton trucks and all of America's front
line soldiers to move and plant the mines in three days. It beggars the
imagination to assume U.S. commanders will expend their material and
personnel to do this - even if the U.S. and South Korea have a three-day
warning. It is more likely that the mines will be destroyed - to keep them
from falling into North Korean hands. Moreover, the mines we will deploy
are more akin to the binocular-sighted and hand-turned guns that the North
Koreans used in 1999: they are obsolete, ineffective and antiquated weapons
that are as likely to harm our own soldiers (and impede allied armored
mobility) as North Korea's."
"After blunting North Korea's tank attack on the South (and we are sure to
do so, since it can only come on a narrow corridor between mountains, which
we control and have filled with anti-tank weapons) the American and South
Korean armies will head north to Pyongyang in a decisive counteroffensive
to destroy the North Korean army. On the way north, we will have to run
through our own minefields. And just as happened in Operation Desert Storm,
commanders will warn their
troops to take care - or even slow their advance - for fear of tripping
across our antiquated and obsolete landmines."
http://perc.ca/PEN/1997-11/s-collins3.html:
(The report mentioned below is the report "Exploring the Landmine Myth in
Korea", released by the organization Demilitarization for Democracy).
"The report claimed that the severe losses predicted for South Korean
civilians or American troops in case of an attack from the North were
largely based on a faulty computer game. It also pointed out that "all
analysts agree that North Korea will be unable to take Seoul without tanks,
so the essential allied problem is to halt the mechanized invasion" [and
not troops on foot].
However, the report agreed that having APMs along with anti-tank mines
would offer an additional 30 minute delay before the enemy could disarm the
anti-tank mines. While the loss of that advantage would afford the North
Korean military some tactical advantages, complete air superiority by the
U.S. military could still "destroy all significant military and industrial
targets in the North" and "cut off all resupply and reinforcement."
Even more embarrassing for the Pentagon, retired Lt. General James F.
Hollingsworth, a former army commander in Korea, stated in his forward to
the report that "the use [in Korea] of scatterable mines, 'smart' or not,
would be a game plan for disaster." "
http://www.hrw.org/reports/1997/gen1/General-02.htm
"When General Douglas MacArthur struck at Inchon in September 1950, the
North Koreans slowed the U.S. advance by sowing captured U.S. mines. This
was the first of several examples where U.S. mines actually frustrated its
U.N. coalition field commanders and unintentionally aided their enemy."
"An officer who served in an Engineer Combat Battalion in Korea in 1951-52
reported his observations about how North Koreans obtained huge amounts of
antipersonnel mines: "The enemy found it easy to pick up [U.S] mines in
unguarded fields and lay them behind our own lines.... A second method of
losing mines was abandonment. Too many mines were moved forward. A change
in the tide of battle resulted in the loss of large quantities of mines.
Under pressure of hasty withdrawal, mine-laying sometimes degenerated to
pitching armed mines from the back of a moving truck.... After the Eighth
Army had shipped 120,000 mines to units, only 20,000 were recorded or on
hand. The remaining 100,000 were either abandoned or unrecorded!"
"...a divisional unit of company size was moving into [an] area when one
man tripped a Bouncing Betty [antipersonnel mine]. Immediately two other
men rushed to his aid, and one of them tripped another mine, killing
himself and wounding the other. Other personnel tried to get to the wounded
men, and more mines were set off. In a ghastly debacle that lasted only a
few short minutes, a total of sixteen men were killed and wounded by our
own mines...."
"The Office of the Army Surgeon General reported that 305 men were killed
in action by mines out of 18,498 killed, while 2,401 were wounded in action
by mines out of 72,343 wounded in total."
"Smith also drew from the Surgeon General's statistics the conclusion that
more U.S. mine casualties were caused by U.S. defensive minefields than
were caused by mines encountered in offensive operations and
pursuitoperations against the enemy.26 The obvious conclusion is that U.S.
defensive minefields regularly ensnared their own men."
And finally, a few numbers about civilian casualties worldwide:
http://geography.state.gov/htmls/landmines.html:
"According to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC),
landmines injure or kill approximately 26,000 civilians every year; 8,000
to 10,000 of landmine victims are children. In Angola, where civil war has
raged for 30 years, some estimate that 10 million mines remain. In the
former Yugoslavia, an estimated four million mines are still buried,
injuring or killing approximately ten children a week, according to Save
the Children. In Cambodia, 50 people are killed or injured by landmines
every month."
Jeroen
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