The Two Koreas_ A Contemporary History - Don Oberdorfer [35]
How much danger the tunnels posed to South Korea, once the first ones were detected, is questionable. U.S. and ROK forces quickly adjusted their defense lines to take account of possible incursions from underground. There is no doubt, though, that the intercepted tunnels served Seoul and Washington as tangible evidence of North Korea's aggressive intentions. According to Nathanial Thayer, the CIA national intelligence officer for East Asia in the mid-1970s, "Anytime anyone wanted more money for CIA, I would go up to see [House Speaker] Tip O'Neill. The argument was, if [North Koreans] are not aggressive, why are they building these tunnels?" The money was always forthcoming.
CHALLENGE FROM THE NORTH
As the underground war suggests, the struggle for military supremacy did not stop or even slow because of the North-South contacts of 1971-72; on the contrary, the fluidity and uncertainty that gave rise to the dialogue also gave rise to an intensified arms race on the divided peninsula. Instead of a turn toward peace, the two Koreas were competing to build and import more and deadlier weapons of war.
A highly respected study by Robert Scalapino and Chong Sik Lee published in the early 1970s described North Korea as "perhaps the most highly militarized society in the world today," and it became even more so as the decade wore on. A retrospective U.S. military analysis of North Korea's development identified 1972-77 as a time of "remarkable North Korean Army growth" surpassing any other period since the Korean War. In parallel fashion, it was also a period of remarkable growth in South Korean military power.
Divided against each other at the DMZ and backed by rival world powers, both Korean states had become heavily militarized following the mutual devastation of the 1950-53 war. In May 1961 Major General Park Chung Hee seized power in Seoul at the head of a military group. Four months later Kim Il Sung finally cemented his undisputed authority over rival factions at the Fourth Workers Party Congress, buttressed by his military comrades-in-arms from his years as a guerrilla fighter. The militarized ruling group in the North promulgated the slogan "Arms on the one hand and hammer and sickle on the other." Kim also formulated a policy known as the Four Great Military Lines, which has become permanent doctrine in North Korea: to arm the entire populace, to fortify the entire country, to train each soldier to become cadre, and to modernize military weapons and equipment.
Tracking North Korean military activity is immensely difficult for any outsider, since virtually all aspects have been and remain closely guarded secrets in Pyongyang. North Korea has never published realistic information on its military forces, procurement, or operations. Fiercely independent and worried about the intentions of its communist allies, North Korea shared remarkably little information even with Moscow and Beijing after the 1950s. A retired Chinese officer who served twelve years as a Chinese military attache in Pyongyang told me that North Korean officials would not disclose even to their close allies the size or organizational structure of their army. On infrequent visits to North Korea units in the field, he said, "we were just like sightseers" and were given no detailed information.
For all these reasons former CIA director Robert Gates described North Korea as "a black hole" and "without parallel the