In the late 1990s, there was a glimpse of hope for peace in the Korean Peninsula, albeit brief.
While the South struggled to reestablish communication, the North had a different agenda.
On the eve of a critical conference in Panmunjom, a mysterious underwater craft
got entangled in fishing nets near the coast of Sochko in South Korea.
As it turned out, the ship was carrying North Korean spies on a covert mission. However,
before the South Koreans could tow the vessel back to port, the entire crew took their own lives.
Despite the setback, the South Koreans insisted on peace through the Sunshine Policy,
expecting that their neighbors would cease their armed missions on their territory.
However, the infiltration attempt only served to escalate tensions…
Friend or Foe
When Kim Dae-Jung became the president of South Korea in 1998, he advocated for the
Reconciliation and Cooperation Policy Towards the North, also known as Sunshine Policy.
Amid a devastating economic crisis, the government in the North spent an astronomical portion of its
budget on its military and nuclear programs while the population suffered widespread starvation.
As a result, the Southerners sought to provide economic
aid to relieve their neighbors from famine.
South Korea had experienced a period of prosperity and stability,
and had redefined its national identity after the end of the Cold War. This led to a desire
to change their conservative politics towards their old opponents and narrow the growing gap.
Besides, South Korea expected to renew communication,
but the North was not nearly as eager to restore the lost relationship,
alleging that the South was still a puppet of the United States and its imperialistic plans.
In turn, South Korea remained open to reconciliation while being weary of
the North's moves. As South Korean author Son Key-young once put it,
the Sunshine Policy: (QUOTE) "Ushered in an era of unprecedented confusion in
South Korea over whether to define North Korea as friend or foe."
Relative Proximity
From its founding, the North Korean government has operated with a unique internal logic of its own,
but its political insecurities and paranoid tendencies have often led
to disastrous consequences. As such, the Communist country has continued
carrying out seaborne infiltrations and other provocations against its democratic counterpart.
Twice, in September of 1996 and June of 1998,
North Korea lost two submarines in an attempt to either insert or exfiltrate
Special Forces agents on espionage missions in the South, ending in tragedy both times.
The public embarrassment alone should have led to the end of such absurd submarine missions,
but on July 13, the body of a North Korean diver washed up on a South Korean beach. The diver had
apparently suffered a heart attack and was found with a Czech submachine gun, an underwater camera,
and a radio transmitter. Not long after, an aluminum submersible was located nearby.
Four months later, a fleet of South Korean patrol boats spotted a mini-submarine
near the northwestern border between the Koreas, off the coast of Ganghwa Island.
But when the patrols attempted to intercept her, the submarine quickly retreated.
All of the early incidents occurred in relative proximity to the demilitarized
zone separating both nations. However, towards the end of the year, another encounter would set
off an exchange of fire off the Yeosu Peninsula, located at the southernmost point of South Korea.
Pursuit
At 11:15 on the night of December 16, 1998, a low-riding vessel with what appeared to be an
antenna protruding from the surface glided into the waters of South Korea. A guard post spotted
the intruder with infrared cameras, and within five minutes, two Republic of Korea Navy patrol
boats were dispatched to look into the matter. Meanwhile, all traffic in the harbor was halted.
However, the patrol boats were unable to locate
the sneaky submarine. That is, until a few hours later.
At 1:30am, a radar signal spotted an enemy ship speeding at about 50 miles per hour,
a mere five miles away from the shore. No less than a dozen vessels were sent to chase
after the contact, and they were soon joined by three Navy P-3 Orion maritime patrol aircraft.
After three hours, Gwangmyeong, a Pohang-class antisubmarine corvette,
finally identified the enemy ship.
One of the orbiting P-3s then dropped flares around the intruder to allow four pursuing
corvettes to close in. However, the spy craft kept heading south in an attempt to flee,
approaching Japanese waters. Upon notification by the South Korean Navy,
the Japanese Self-Defense Force mobilized a fleet of patrol vessels of its own to surveil the chase.
An hour later, the boat was forced to slow down at about 60 miles south of Geoje Island,
most likely due to running out of fuel, with an estimated range of no more than
230 miles. In truth, the vessel required pickup by a mother ship.
Unsurprisingly, she was a North Korean I-SILC semi-submersible.
A Bitter Cup
Unlike an earlier model captured in the 1980s, the I-SILC could fully submerge down to a depth of
25 meters to avoid detection. However, she lacked an electric motor to propel her while underwater.
The ship was almost 13 meters long, weighed ten tons, and was covered in an anti-radar coating.
Notably, the Improved Submersible Infiltration Landing Craft could
submerge up to three meters deep, exposing only the crew cab and a folding snorkel mast,
which was likely the antenna observed by the guard post.
While more recent types are able to fire lightweight 324-millimeter torpedoes, the boat
captured off Yeosu had no weaponry apart from the small caliber arms carried by the crew members.
A South Korean corvette then fired warning shots off the boat's bow, and in response,
the infiltrators opened fire from inside the ship with a machine gun.
Subsequently, the 1,300-ton Namwon raked the semi-submersible with 40-millimeter anti-aircraft
gunfire. The corvette then blasted a chunk out of the ship's port side with a 76-millimeter
rapid-fire cannon, and the ruptured craft sank three hundred feet deep in just a few moments.
An hour later, only the remains of a single sailor wearing a wetsuit
and with a live hand grenade were retrieved.
Meanwhile, South Korea issued a red alert order. As had been the case with earlier incidents,
the authorities immediately began a search for possible infiltrators on their soil.
Moreover, the Defense Minister demanded an apology from Pyongyang, which denied any involvement.
An official statement from the North Korean Central News Agency harshly stated that:
(QUOTE) "The incidents have nothing to do with the north. Now the South Korean are
trying hard to find a pretext for unleashing a war against the north in line with the U.S.
imperialists' moves for war against the DPRK. It goes without saying that the "north's submarine
infiltration incident" is a farce cooked up for that purpose. We can no longer remain a
passive onlooker to the South Korean continuous anti-communist campaign and slander against the
north. The campaign can convince no one. We will take resolute measures so that the provokers may
drink a bitter cup. We seriously warn the South Korean not to act rashly."
Old School
South Korean observers found it puzzling that North Korea continued sending armed infiltrators
on dangerous missions despite the Sunshine Policy. Some speculated that factions in North
Korea actively sought the campaign's failure, while others believed that the North Korean
military was trying to refine its infiltration tactics in preparation for a full-scale war.
The wreckage of the semi-submersible was located a month after the incident, but it could not be
salvaged until March. Only then were the remains of two more members found, one of
which had a South Korean identification card and passport, identifying him as Won Jin-Wu. The man
was carrying computer diskettes, a million Japanese yen, poison ampoules, and rolls of film.
He also had a rental contract for an apartment in the Bongcheon district
of Seoul and a bag of cookies from a bakery in the same area.
In addition, the team discovered a list of names and phone numbers of a dozen South
Korean citizens in contact with North Korean intelligence. Allegedly, the individual was a
seasoned spy who pretended to be a Southeast Asian businessman dispatched to make contact
with the National Democratic Revolutionary Party, a group of South Korean supporters in Pyongyang.
Not long before, the group's leader, Kim Young-Hwan, had made a public statement
against the North. In response, the agent appointed a South Korean, Ha Young-Ok, to assume
the party's leadership, and trained him on the subtleties of staying in touch with his superiors.
As it turned out, a submarine detected in November had attempted to bring Ha to North Korea for
training, but she was chased away. Later, they would try again from a pickup spot off of Yeosu.
The secretive mission was supposedly a desperate attempt to persuade former leader Kim Young-Hwan
to return to the recently-consolidated Kim Jong-Il regime and reinforce his image in the South.
However, the spies decided to go down rather than surrender
to the Southerners, putting an end to their lives.
Even so, one thing was clear: naval infiltration and covert operations were essential to North
Korean military doctrine. Despite the loss of life, the aggressions continued. Six months later,
following the so-called Battle of Yeosu, a more significant battle between the two Koreas took
place off Yeonpyeong. And an even larger and costlier battle occurred three years later...
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