Di Vincenzo Santo*
(Da NYT – 12 settembre 2017)
Seoul. The last time South Korea is known to have plotted to assassinate the North Korean leadership, nothing went as planned. In the late 1960s, after North Korean commandoes tried to ransack the presidential palace in Seoul, South Korea secretly trained misfits plucked from prison or off the streets to sneak into North Korea and slit the throat of its leader, Kim Il-sung. When the mission was aborted, the men mutinied. They killed their trainers and fought their way into Seoul before blowing themselves up, an episode the government concealed for decades. Now, as Mr. Kim’s grandson, Kim Jong-un, accelerates his nuclear missile program, South Korea is again targeting the North’s leadership. A day after North Korea conducted its sixth — and by far most powerful — nuclear test this month, the South Korean defense minister, Song Young-moo, told lawmakers in Seoul that a special forces brigade, defense officials described as a “decapitation unit”, would be established by the end of the year. The unit has not been assigned to literally decapitate North Korean leaders. But that is clearly the menacing message South Korea is trying to send. (…) Rarely does a government announce a strategy to assassinate a head of state, but South Korea wants to keep the North on edge and nervous about the consequences of further developing its nuclear arsenal. (…) It is a difficult balancing act, pitting Mr. Moon’s preference for a diplomatic solution against his nation’s need to answer an existential question: How can a country without nuclear weapons deter a dictator who has them? (…)
Marines sud coreani in un’esercitazione
*Generale C.A. (Riserva)
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