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By Newsweek Editors
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FORTY-SIX YEARS AGO, NORTH KOREAN commandos captured a beachhead on South Korea's eastern coast, spearheading the invasion that rolled through the peninsula. Off the same rugged shore one night last week, a South Korean taxi driver spotted something like a whale wallowing in the surf. It was the latest communist invasion--this one led by an ancient submarine armed with slogans, small arms and chewing gum. Many of the invaders shot each other to death within yards of the crippled sub, leaving unanswered the main question: what on earth is North Korea up to?
The North has lacked discernible leadership since the death of strongman Kim Il Sung two years ago. Mixed signals are the order of the day. The botched commando mission came just when the North needs the South to finance its nuclear plants and needs the South's rice to make up for crops lost in recent floods. But nobody in the South was talking about helping the North to a ""soft landing'' last week. ""They have not given up their desire to unify under communism,'' stormed President Kim Young Sam.
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The attack sub was apparently on some kind of spy mission when it broke down. Nearby, 11 of the would-be heroes turned up dead; their bullet wounds came from one or more AK-47 assault rifles, none of which was found in the vicinity. That left the possibility that the commandos on board had assassinated some of the boat crew. The survivors split up and apparently tried to make it to the North Korean border, 50 miles away. An elderly South Korean farmer and his wife were suspicious when a man with a Northern accent asked for water. The farmer called police, who nabbed Lee Kwang Soo, 31, a junior North Korean officer.
Plied with potato whiskey, Lee told investigators that the 112-foot, Shark-class attack sub, one of about 25 in the North Korean fleet, had been operating in South Korean waters for three days. It ran aground after picking up three commandos and two guides who earlier had been dropped off to reconnoiter the nearby Kangnung airport and other sites. As the 15 survivors headed north, the South Korean military launched massive sweeps. The troops gunned down three infiltrators, then killed three more and a lone straggler in other shoot-outs.
South Korean troops remained at Defcon I, the highest alert. South Koreans are used to living with paranoia. The Defense Ministry says North Korea has sent in more than 300 spies in the last 25 years--probably a vast underestimation. More worrying arre the North's recent bizarre military operations. Last summer, squads of North Korean soldiers marched into the demilitarized zone separating the Koreas--apparently to show contempt for the disarmament deal that has kept the peace for 43 years. The misadventures of the wayward submarine were a farce. But a power struggle over control of North Korea's million-soldier army--most of it poised along a border defended in part by 37,000 U.S. troops--could provoke a genuine disaster. North Korea is weak and hungry, but lacking other sustenance its decaying regime still feeds on confrontation.
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