A Case of Frustration

NORTH KOREA

Along the 151-mile Demilitarized Zone separating North and South Korea, North Korean soldiers have taken to using female dogs in making their patrols. Reason: they hope that the bitches, when in heat, will lure South Korea's male patrol dogs away from their handlers--thus winning canine defections to the North. This petty bit of harassment shows just how far the Communist North Koreans are willing to go to stir up trouble on the border. They have increased their subversion and infiltration attempts by 40% this year, and in recent weeks have continued to step up the pace.

In the first five months of 1967, North Korea committed 59 border violations, half of which resulted in clashes be tween patrols. Seven weeks ago, 60 North Korean and 40 Republic of Korea soldiers clashed and, for the first time since the armistice agreement in 1953, the R.O.K. forces had to use artillery fire to throw back the North Koreans. The North Koreans have also been infiltrating subversives and saboteurs into South Korea, about half of them by sea. They now have fast (40 knots), 60-ft. to 70-ft. boats, designed to look like fishing craft, that regularly land agents along the Southern coast. Others infiltrate across the DMZ.

Nasty & Vicious. In just such a manner last week, North Koreans struck twice at U.S. and South Korean positions in and near the DMZ. Just before dawn, a North Korean band slipped into a barbed-wire compound of the U.S. 2nd Division just south of the DMZ and planted bombs under two Quonset barracks; the resulting explosion killed two Americans and injured 16 others, along with two South Korean soldiers. A few days later, North Koreans who were attempting to infiltrate a guard post in the same area exchanged fire with U.S. and South Korean troops, wounding an American and a South Korean. As a fitting finish to the week, Communist shore batteries also opened up for 20 minutes on a fleet of South Korean naval vessels just south of the DMZ.

Though part of the harassment is an effort to distract U.S. attention from South Viet Nam, the bigger reason for North Korea's provocations is to divert its own people's thoughts from their deepening economic troubles. "The Communist actions," says General Charles Bonesteel III, the United Nations and U.S. Eighth Army commander in Korea, "are nasty and vicious, but they amount largely to frustrated impotency."

The man behind the actions is North Korea's shrewd Premier Kim II Sung, 55, Korea's World War II resistance hero against the Japanese. Kim took full party power in 1955 and, through intrigue, murder, imprisonment and character assassination, managed to wipe out every shred of political opposition. A ruthless strategist and master manipulator, he holds onto power by the old Stalinist tactic of periodic purges. The most recent came last October when he shuffled the Central Committee, sacking three key officials and longtime associates.

Kim has been far less successful in manipulating the economy. In 1961, he launched a seven-year plan as part of the broader "Chullima" development program--named after the legendary Korean flying horse that could cover 300 miles in a single bound. Kim has been forced to admit that his flying horse has acted more like an old grey mare, has therefore extended the deadline for the plan's vaunted goals to 1970. To get the investment he needs for development, he has quietly shifted his allegiance from Red China to Russia, which is far more able to afford North Korea's aid requirements. Along the way, his government is going deeper and deeper into hock to Russia; without Russian fuel, all North Korean jets would be grounded and a complete cutoff in aid would probably cripple the country. Kim has also made a bitter enemy of Peking; wall posters have denounced him as "a traitor to the worker class and a disciple of Khrushchev" --a Communist leader that Kim could never abide.

Warning of War. The biggest reason for Chullima's failure is the strain of North Korea's war machine on a none-too-viable economy. To support its 370,000-man army (plus an aid program to North Viet Nam that is so far limited to supplying small arms, medicines, tractors, diesel engines, psywar personnel, military advisers and 50 MIG instructors), North Korean military spending will run to a hefty $465 million this year, or 30.2% of the total national budget. To justify it, Kim tells his country that war is imminent with the U.S.-backed "imperialistic dictatorship" to the south.

The result is steadily mounting tension above the 38th parallel. Air-raid shelters are being built in the cities, and antiaircraft batteries are reportedly going up in the countryside. To be certain the people keep the faith, Kim's government stages regular political-indoctrination classes at factories, offices, schools and neighborhood meeting halls; militia groups practice bayoneting replicas of Uncle Sam. Kim is also careful that his people hear nothing of the economic and political progress of the South or of the great upheaval of the cultural revolution in Red China, which might send ripples through his own country. It is a measure of the success of Kim's censorship that most North Koreans genuinely believe that the South Koreans, who recently held free elections at a time of rising national prosperity, are living in worse conditions than animals.

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