North Korea, which signed an agreement Friday to freeze and eventually dismantle facilities capable of producing nuclear weapons, shows no sign yet of defusing a "very explosive situation" created by the massive deployment of conventional forces near the border with South Korea, the top U.S. military officer said Saturday.
Gen. John Shalikashvili, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he is "well satisfied" with a U.S.-North Korean nuclear agreement signed in Geneva Friday. But he said that the radical communist country's large conventional offensive capability continues to pose "a considerable threat" and that there is no sign Pyongyang's secretive leadership has abandoned designs on conquering the South.Shalikashvili said the cancellation Friday by the United States and South Korea of the 1994 "Team Spirit" joint military exercises scheduled for next month was "the prudent thing to do right now." But he indicated that he wants to see the 1995 maneuvers go ahead as scheduled in March.
North Korea in the past few years has been building an offensive capability that is "very threatening" to the United States and South Korea, the general said. "They have embarked on a very rapid development of an extensive long-range artillery program," he added. Guns capable of reaching the South Korean capital, Seoul, and of causing "great devastation" have been massed along the Demilitarized Zone and placed in well-protected caves, he said.
North Korea is also building "one of the world's largest unconventional warfare capabilities, whose only purpose is to be offensive in nature," Shalikashvili said. He said this consists of about 60,000 special forces trained to infiltrate deep into South Korea to "threaten American and South Korean installations and cause sabotage and turmoil."