by WorldTribune Staff, October 10, 2017

North Korea is practicing nighttime attacks via paragliders that would enable special forces commandos to silently infiltrate the South Korea-U.S. Combined Forces Command in Seoul, South Korean defense officials said.

The South Korean Army’s radar would hardly detect a nighttime attack by North Korean paragliding soldiers, a South Korean defense official told Yonhap in an Oct. 10 report.

“A paraglider flies at a low altitude without making a sound. It could be useful for making a surprise attack, like a drone,” the official said.

North Korean special forces could carry folded paragliders, which weigh 6 to 9 pounds, on their backs and paraglide from a summit to seize a target in a surprise attack, the Yonhap report said.

The South Korean officials said North Korean paragliding soldiers participated in drills at a training ground that has a model building of the Combined Forces Command.

“I believe that North Korean special forces are adopting amazing methods of infiltration with limited resources,” the official told Yonhap.

Another defense official said the North Korean drills with paragliders had prompted the South Korean and U.S. forces to conduct a joint short-range air defense drill late last month.

The exercise involved South Korea’s air defense unit and soldiers from the U.S. 6th Battalion, 52nd Air Defense Artillery Regiment. It drill, held in Pocheon, north of Seoul, was aimed at countering inbound low-altitude aerial threats like North Korean jets, transports and helicopters.

Meanwhile, in a separate report, Yonhap said that hackers from North Korea stole a large cache of military documents from South Korea, including a plan to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un.

Rhee Cheol-Hee, a South Korean lawmaker, said the information hacked from Seoul’s Defense Ministry included documents on wartime contingency plans drawn up by the U.S. and South Korea and reports to the allies’ senior commanders.

Plans for the South’s special forces were reportedly accessed, along with information on significant power plants and military facilities in the South.

The Defense Ministry in Seoul has so far refused to comment about the reported hacking.

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