South Korea Plans Decapitation Unit to Scare North Korea

Seoul is preparing to target North Korea's leader after it rattled nerves with its sixth nuclear test and ramped up tensions with the US. In an effort to stop North Korea from building up its nuclear arsenal, South Korea is looking to target Kim Jong-un. Meanwhile, the South Korean military has been busy retooling helicopters and transporting planes to infiltrate North Korea at night time, The New York Times reports.

The highly unusual move for the South Korean Government to announce its plans to try and assassinate a head of state illustrates just how determined Seoul is to scare Kim.

The last time South Korea is known to have plotted to assassinate the North Korean leadership, nothing went as planned.In the late 1960s, after North Korean commandoes tried to ransack the presidential palace in Seoul, South Korea secretly trained misfits plucked from prison or off the streets to sneak into North Korea and slit the throat of its leader, Kim Il-sung. When the mission was aborted, the men mutinied.

They killed their trainers and fought their way into Seoul before blowing themselves up, an episode the government concealed for decades.

Although a majority of South Koreans, especially conservative politicians, and commentators, call for arming their country with nuclear weapons of its own, Mr. Moon has repeatedly vowed to rid the Korean Peninsula of such weapons. In June, Mr. Trump reiterated Washington’s nuclear-umbrella doctrine, promising to protect the South with the full range of United States military capabilities, both conventional and nuclear.

North Korea keeps artillery and rocket tubes near the border, and is capable of delivering 5,200 rounds on Seoul in the first 10 minutes of war, military planners in South Korea say. The North also operates hundreds of missiles designed to hit South Korea and the US bases in Japan and beyond to deter American intervention should war break out.

The need to detect an impending strike has become more critical. North Korea has made its nuclear bombs small and light enough - weighing under 500 kilograms, or about 1,100 pounds — to be fitted onto its missiles, though it is still unclear whether they are fully weaponized.