South Korea bolsters its border defences, fearing Hamas-style attack from North

The recent surprise attack by Hamas militants on Israel has highlighted the potential risk of a similar assault against South Korea by North Korea. This has underscored the urgency for Seoul to bolster its defence capabilities. In recent days, the South Korean defence establishment has been closely monitoring the Israel-Hamas conflict, with the aim of learning from the ongoing conflict and reassessing its level of military preparedness against North Korea. South Korea’s new Defence Minister, Shin Won-sik, has suggested that Israel could have suffered fewer losses from the attack if it had conducted extensive round-the-clock surveillance at its border with Gaza. To enhance the South’s border security and surveillance activities, Shin has proposed the suspension of an existing agreement on the expanded buffer zones separating the two Koreas. This agreement was signed in 2018 with the aim of reducing military tension. According to some defence analysts, North Korea has reportedly deployed more than 1,000 long-range artillery pieces near the Korean Demilitarized Zone. If fired simultaneously, these could pummel the Seoul metropolitan area with some 16,000 rockets and various types of artillery shells in the first hour of an attack. North Korea’s special forces, numbering around 200,000, are primarily trained to infiltrate the South using various methods such as tunnels, submarines, hovercraft, high-speed landing craft, and helicopters. They are also believed to have been trained in using gliders attached to aircraft to infiltrate the South by flying at low altitudes under the radar. In their recent attack on Israel, Hamas militants used paragliders to land in Israel before they killed hundreds of people at a music festival. North Korea has a long history of planning hybrid attacks against the South, which involve a simultaneous assault using ballistic missiles, artillery pieces, rocket launchers and drones. These weapons have different trajectories, altitudes and speeds, making it almost impossible for the South to shield itself from devastating damage. Some analysts suggest that Hamas might have adopted North Korea’s blueprint of combining conventional and guerilla war tactics, including the use of underground tunnels, paragliders, rockets and artillery shelling. The Israel-Hamas conflict has also highlighted the need for South Korea to develop robust air defence systems as soon as feasible. Hamas was able to fire thousands of rockets on the southern part of Israel, overwhelming its 'Iron Dome' shield. The North Korean threat is far greater than that of Hamas as it has a wider range and a larger stockpile of ballistic missiles and drones, making the South highly vulnerable to surprise attacks. South Korea is developing its own version of the 'Iron Dome', the Low Altitude Missile Defence (LAMD) system, which is aimed at intercepting and destroying short-range rockets and artillery shells. However, it remains to be seen if this system can thwart any attacks by the North. Beyond potential attacks from the ground and air, North Korea could also pose a serious threat at sea near its disputed maritime border with the South. Last month, the North unveiled a new 'tactical nuclear attack' submarine. In response to this, the nuclear-powered USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier arrived at a key South Korean naval base in Busan in a show of force. This is the second US aircraft carrier to visit the country this year, following the USS Nimitz which docked in Busan in March for naval drills with South Korea. On Shin’s proposal to scrap the 2018 agreement on the wider inter-Korean buffer zone, analysts said the Hamas attack on Israel would lend credence to calls by a number of South Korean politicians and senior military officers for such a move. They noted Shin’s comment on the need for the South’s reconnaissance and surveillance assets to closely watch North Korea’s military activities at the border and beyond. The agreement, signed by then President Moon Jae-in and Kim Jong-un, involved the setting up of a land buffer zone, where artillery drills and regiment-level field manoeuvres were to be suspended, as well as maritime buffer zones, banning artillery firing and naval drills near the border. However, the agreement was violated by the North when it sent reconnaissance drones across the border. Despite this, the South was able to monitor the North’s military movements at the border via its US ally, which has been carrying out aerial intelligence-gathering activities over the North and is not bound by the agreement. The Israel-Hamas war, however, underscored the importance of such an agreement to prevent any military clash between the two Koreas. Some analysts believe that if there had been a buffer zone between Palestine and Israel, like the one between the North and the South, the situation would have been much better. They argue that it is crucial to implement the agreement thoroughly, rather than suspending or scrapping it.