SEOUL — North Korea may send low-flying AN-2 infiltration aircraft carrying nuclear warheads to attack South Korea, an opposition lawmaker warned.
"North Korea currently deploys some 300 AN-2s. If North Korea can minimize nuclear warheads into 1.5 tons, they can be put on the infiltration planes," Song Young-Sun, a lawmaker with the main opposition Grand National Party, said during a parliamentary audit of the Defense Ministry.
"The AN-2 flies low enough to evade the radars of the South Korean military and U.S. forces in South Korea." Song said. The planes could be used "to deliver nuclear and chemical weapons for attacks on the South," she said.
Song, a former military expert, said North Korea has trained as many as 100,000 special agents who could serve as "suicide bombers."
Song also said the AN-2 could land on an air strip less than 250 meters long, including many of the 106 golf courses in metropolitan Seoul.
Meanwhile, South Korea's military has stepped up preparations for a possible nuclear war on the Korean peninsula after North Korea carried out its first-ever underground nuclear test on Oct. 9. The United States confirmed North Korea's nuclear test on Oct 16, citing a yield of less than one kiloton.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNA) said an analysis of air samples collected in the North "detected radioactive debris which confirms that North Korea conducted an underground nuclear explosion."
The Joint Chiefs of Staff has raised the need for introducing state-of-the-art weapons capable of destroying the delivery of nuclear weapons from the North.
