SEOUL, South Korea -- The world is often at a loss about what goes on in reclusive, militarized North Korea. How the communist country is preparing for the millennium bug is no exception.
The prevailing school of thought: North Korea isn't ready for Y2K glitches and will suffer damage but is so low-tech that there won't be major disruptions.That's a relief to South Korean military officials who say it's very unlikely that a weapons system in the heavily armed North will accidentally swing into action. The two countries have been at odds since they fought a war a half-century ago.
But some in South Korea remain disturbed about their northern neighbor's Y2K-preparedness.
"We know so little about what's going on there. How can we not be worried, knowing that one accident, such as a missile firing, could lead to a war?" said Baek San-hum, a shipping company executive.
Earlier this year, the U.S.-led U.N. military command in South Korea proposed that experts from both Koreas get together to discuss Y2K problems that could affect the North Korean military.
North Korea dismissed the offer, saying it was slander aimed at denigrating its armed forces. Pyongyang has spent lavishly on its 1.1 million-member military despite the famine and floods of recent years that forced it to appeal for outside food aid.
In a November report, South Korea's defense ministry said the chance of an inadvertent missile launch in the North was minimal, partly because Pyongyang's military hardware is outdated.
"There is little possibility that North Korea will fire a missile by accident because of the Y2K problem," a ministry official said. A Pentagon official said human error would have to be a factor.
Most sophisticated weapons in North Korea, such as Scud missiles, were imported from the former Soviet Union or, like the Nodong and Taepodong missiles, were based on Soviet technology and built locally.
The South Korean report cited a recent letter from the Russian government to Seoul that says Soviet weapons in North Korea's arsenal do not have Y2K problems because most are not computerized.
"Based on the letter, we assume that North Korea's weapons system mostly depends on manual operation, not computers," the report says.
The millennium bug stems from programming in older software that expresses only the last two digits of a year. Uncorrected systems cannot distinguish between 2000 and 1900 and might suffer complications after Dec. 31.
North Korea's civilian computer technology is believed to be outdated because of a lack of imports, but that doesn't necessarily mean it is more susceptible to Y2K failures.
South Korea says the North can annually produce 30,000 personal computers and has held annual computer exhibitions since 1990. It runs several computer engineering schools and institutions, including one with 800 researchers that is developing Korean word processors and other software.