In South Korea, US Special Ops Train to Help Overthrow North Korean Regime

US Air Force conducting military exercises in South Korea. Credit: DoD
US Air Force conducting military exercises in South Korea. Credit: DoD

Today at Al Jazeera America I argue that the U.S. should stop occupying South Korea, not only because they don’t belong there but because the highly militarized alliance between the U.S. and South Korea doesn’t actually weaken North Korea, but helps sustain the regime by incentivizing China to continue to prop up Pyongyang.

At Medium.com, Robert Beckhusen reports on the latest round of U.S.-South Korean military exercises and reveals for the first time that U.S. special operations forces are training for guerrilla war in North Korea and practicing how to grow an “indigenous resistance organization” inside North Korea.

Every year, the U.S. and South Korea team up for one of the world’s largest military exercises. Thousands of troops backed by fighter aircraft, strategic bombers and Navy warships plan for the worst.

But America’s elite Special Operations Forces are also involved—planning for the day when they might be the first ones tasked with stepping across the DMZ.

The training is a less publicized element of the Pentagon’s exercises in South Korea, which are emphasized as defensive in nature. But for three days in April 2013, American commandos carried out simulated North Korea missions during Balance Knife 13-1—part of the much larger Foal Eagle exercise—near Iksan and Damyang, South Korea.

Along with the 7th and 11th ROK Special Forces Brigades, the exercise involved two American commando groups of 12 men each—Operational Detachment Alphas 1336 and 1333. Both American teams belonged to Charlie Company, 3rd Battalion of the 1st Special Forces Group.

Notably, the training dealt with how to move special operators into and out of North Korea, according to a review published in the January edition of Special Warfare, the wonky, academic journal of the Army’s John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School. The scenario also dealt with how to grow an “indigenous resistance organization” inside the North.

Why? How can this possibly be in the U.S. interest? And don’t say it’s to save the North Korean people from dictatorship, because obviously Washington couldn’t care less about that.

Americans frequently see media reports of the aggressive North Korean regime carrying out this or that ostentatious military maneuver, which indeed does happen. How often do Americans hear about the incredibly ostentatious military exercise, one of the biggest in the world, that Washington carries out right in South Korea, at least in part to threaten Pyongyang? If a designated enemy state of ours was conducting training on the Mexico border designed to prepare for regime change contingencies, how would Washington react?

14 thoughts on “In South Korea, US Special Ops Train to Help Overthrow North Korean Regime”

  1. Amerika has NO RIGHT of any kind to be in ANY SOVERIGN NATION OUTSIDE OF IT'S OWN BORDERS. BRING HOME ALL THE poor-duped US TROOPS–NOW. Start with TECHNO-THIEF SOUTH KOREA.

    1. According to the German constitution it is forbidden to inflict unrest between people in other nations – of course when the secret service does it, it is secret and unknown. USA and German politicians were not sentenced for inflicting this deathly civil war in Yugoslavia. Additional massacre fakes they did claim or stage even were used to justify their attacks on Yugoslavia and targeted penalty bombing of their CIVIL infrastructure. see http://www.srpska-mreza.com/Kosovo/NATO-attack/sp

      350,000 deaths in Yugoslavia
      1 million in Iraq
      thousands in Afghanistan and Chechnya, Sudan, Mali, Jemen,
      60,000 in Libya
      200,000 in Syria

  2. if only they could police the US southern border and keep it safe from the dea/Sinaloa cocaine running.

    the Koreans can handle their own problems.

    1. It is the CIA who does provides drug business !
      The CIA needs to finance dirty actions which no democratic governmental body can allow !

      Search for the book of Mc Coy regarding CIA AND OPIUM TRADE – THE NEW ONE:

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      The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade
      It's all here.

      1) "The CIA's decade-long Afghan war during the 1980's had destabilized a delicate political balance within Central Asia-devastating Afghanistan, destabilizing Pakistan, and mobilizing radical Islam"
      2) "In particulate, the ISI's role as the CIA's surrogate in the Afghan war had invested this military intelligence unit with vast profits from the heroin trade and installed it inside Afghanistan and the patron of radical Islamic parties."
      3) "Though the Soviets had withdrawn their troops, the CIA felt it had a "moral duty to arm the Mujaheddin" for a final assault on Kabul and raised its covert aid to 350 million in 1998"
      4) "Pakistan then backed the formation of a new Pashutun force, the Taliban. With arms from the ISI and fanatical recruits from Pakistan's militant madrasah Islamic schools, the Taliban launched a campaign to capture Kabul in 1995 from its base around the southern city of Kandahar."
      5 "…there was every indication that the CIA was aware that its Afghan and Central American operations contributed to the export of cocaine and heroin to the United States-and did nothing to slow this drug flow"
      6) "Whenever it has been confronted with a expose of drug trafficking by its former allies, the agency has bone to extraordinary lengths to preempt these charges"

      1. As you know, Afghan Opium production is about 90 percent worldwide – guess who is protecting this business ! USA even turned the Kosovo drug mafia into the Kosovo Liberation Army, bombed them to power and gave this drug mafia boss Hacim Thaci a tiny 2 million inhabitants country in order to ship US drug supply from Aghanistan to the whole world in diplomatic luggage. However, most drugs according to UN DC statistics go to Europe.

        1. Not to mention that the USA is a leading producer and exporter of the world's most lethal drug, tobacco, namely cigarettes, which are expected to kill a BILLION people in the 21st century.

          At the exact same time as fighting its phony "war on drugs", which is really a war on poor people trying to get minimum wages, etc., the USA threatens countries like Thailand with sanctions if it puts limits on US cigarette imports.

  3. "Why? How can this possibly be in the U.S. interest? And don’t say it’s to save the North Korean people from dictatorship, because obviously Washington couldn’t care less about that."

    Hear, hear. Washington installs and supports dozens of dictators around the world, including in South Korea until the Koreans overthrew him in 1987!

    As for the "why?" (Not that you don't know this) To put it crassly, it's the same reason Washington wanted to take over all of Korea in its Korean war: the ever so profitable project attempted by the British and many others – world domination.

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