The Two Koreas_ A Contemporary History - Don Oberdorfer [59]
For many years the principal source of intelligence on North Korea had been aerial photography from the cameras of American spy planes and reconnaissance satellites, augmented by electronic eavesdropping. Since the central U.S. military concern was a potential surprise attack, the photographs were carefully examined by combat units for evidence of southward movement or other signs of impending assault, then filed away. Until Armstrong came along, however, there had been little effort to compare the overall strength of North Korean units in the latest pictures with those of previous months or years.
Armstrong's first intensive study, completed in December 1975, reported North Korean tank forces to be about 80 percent larger than had been previously estimated. Armed with this alarming finding, he persuaded the army to assign six more full-time analysts to his project. Over the next two years, his team documented the development of North Korean special forces units, which were training on mockups of South Korean highways and terrain, and a major increase in the number and forward deployment of North Korean artillery.
When Armstrong finally took his findings to the U.S. command in Seoul in December 1977, he found a receptive audience in General Vessey, the U.S. commander, and others who were fighting the Carter withdrawal program. The following month, Vessey requested a complete intelligence reassessment of North Korea's strength, complaining to the Pentagon of the adverse effects "on overall U.S. military policy and decision-making" of overly conservative estimates of the enemy. In response, the army initiated a much more extensive study in Washington, with a reinforced team of thirty-five analysts summoned from all over the world. They went to work reexamining all the intelligence reports on North Korean forces since the armistice, and scrutinizing every frame of overhead photography and all the signal intelligence obtained since 1969. The results, officially reported in classified briefings beginning in mid-1978, were startling.
Due to a strong and steady buildup since 1971-72, North Korea was credited in the new estimate with about seven hundred maneuver battalions, nearly twice the number carried on the books a decade earlier and nearly double the size of the South Korean force structure. Moreover, the North was estimated to have many more tanks and artillery pieces than previously known, giving it a more than two-toone advantage over the South in terms of the numbers of those weapons. The study, which eventually identified every North Korean unit down to the infantry company and artillery battery level, found the bulk of the forces positioned closer to the DMZ than had been expected. The overall size of the North Korean ground forces, previously estimated at 485,000, was now put at 680,000, an increase of about 40 percent. For the first time, the North was estimated to have more men under arms than the South, whose population was twice as large. In North Korea, according to the new data, one out of every twenty-six persons was on active duty in the army, the highest proportion of any major nation.
Senior officials were quick to recognize that the new findings had tremendous implications for the withdrawal program. Nathanial Thayer, who was national intelligence officer at the CIA, recalled that "everyone was thinking the same thing-this is a good way for Carter to get off this issue. Nobody I knew was for pulling out the troops; we all saw it as trouble." In early January 1979, results of the new estimate leaked to The Army Times and became front-page news in other papers, including my report in The Washington Post.
The new findings sharply intensified congressional pressure to halt the withdrawal program. Carter, however, was skeptical of the validity of the intelligence reassessment, and decades later he remains so. Recalling the immediate leaks and political