South Korea is setting up a “decapitation unit” to deal with the threat from North Korea—a unit tasked with conducting cross-border raids into North Korea, possibly with the intention of killing North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un.
According to the New York Times, South Korean defense minister Song Young-moo announced that the unit would be established by the end of the year, as part of a strategy to keep the rogue regime on its toes and as a way to get them to sit down at the negotiating table.
“The best deterrence we can have, next to having our own nukes, is to make Kim Jong-un fear for his life,” Shin Won-sik, a retired three-star general, told the Times.
“The idea is how we can instill the kind of fear a nuclear weapon would—but do so without a nuke. In the medieval system like North Korea, Kim Jong-un’s life is as valuable as hundreds of thousands of ordinary people whose lives would be threatened in a nuclear attack,” he added.
On Monday the UN Security Council approved a fresh wave of sanctions, targeting North Korea’s oil imports, textile exports, as well as its use of foreign laborers abroad. In addition to sanctions passed in August, 90 percent of all North Korean exports are now under sanction.
Trump dismissed the new sanctions as a “very small step” and added that “those sanctions are nothing compared to what ultimately will have to happen.”
The increased focus on Kim Jong-un by South Korean leaders is believed to already be having an effect. According to the Times, South Korean intelligence officials told lawmakers in June that Kim has used his deputies’ cars as decoys to move from place to place.
However, lawmakers may be suspicious of a move to assassinate a North Korean leader. As Business Insider details at length, in 1968 South Korea assembled 31 recruits from prison and the streets to travel to North Korea and kill then President Kim Il Sung.
However, when relations between North and South warmed, the mission was canceled. The recruits revolted and killed their commander and a number of other officers. They then traveled to Seoul and blew themselves up with hand grenades after a firefight with authorities.
Adam Shaw is a Breitbart News politics reporter based in New York. Follow Adam on Twitter: @AdamShawNY
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