A surprising line appeared in the South Korea's military budget. $300,000 or 340 million won for assassinating Kim Jong-un. To be precise, this funding was allocated to training and equipping the special forces unit that is to eliminate the leader of North Korea.
Daria Kozlova is reporting on how real this development is.
The biggest nuclear test in North Korea was in 2017. The launch of the newest intercontinental ballistic missile Hwasong-15 and threats to annihilate the USA.
South Korea responds with a new line in their military budget. It allocated money for assassinating North Korea's leader. They will also create a special forces unit to "behead Kim Jong-un".
Konstantin Asmolov, research officer of the Institute of Far Eastern Studies: "About a year ago the special forces unit was said to be preparing to assassinate Kim Jong-un in case of war. As far as I understand, now they just allocated funding to kill Kim Jong-un and to purchase grenade launchers, suicide drones, etc".
There is both the strategy and the training procedure. This special forces unit will train the same program as SEAL Team Six, the American special operations unit that eliminated Osama bin Laden. However, the military experts are skeptical about the idea of creating a special unit for assassinating Kim Jong-un.
Vasily Kashin, the senior officer of the Institute of Far Eastern Studies: "This is just an attention-grabbing stunt. Obviously, any actions against the North Korean establishment will have nothing in common with the operation of capturing and eliminating bin Laden. Furthermore, such operations even against leaders of weaker countries failed. For example, Saddam Hussein was killed only after the occupation of his country".
The legitimacy of the idea itself is questionable. Kim Jong-un is the head of a UN member State. 25 million people regard him as their national leader.
And the plans for eliminating North Korea's leadership were framed under each South Korean president. The previous President Park Geun-hye reportedly planned to stage an accident e.g. to organize a car accident or a train wreck.
Georgy Toloraya, director of Russia's Asian strategy center: "This is terrible because it can be called financing state terrorism. And this is a very bad PR stunt for Moon Jae-in, South Korea's President who came into office with the intentions of cooperating with North Korea and to build bridges between the North and the South".
But according to South Korea's laws, there are no contradictions. They don't acknowledge any power in the North as legitimate. That's why actions aimed at deposing North Korea's government are legal by South Korean law.
Konstantin Asmolov: "The North is an anti-state organization. Territory taken away by bandits. The problem is that there are no normal agreements that would regulate the legal process. North Korea technically quit the peace treaty and the South never signed it".
Asian media was surprised not by the idea of creating a special forces unit and the assassination of Kim Jong-un but by the amount of funding. $312,000 was allocated for 1,000 special operatives a year. It is known that most of the money will be spent on ear protectors, biometric equipment, and fluoroscopes, not on armament.
However, experts suppose that in the near future these expenses can multiply. In 2018, South Korea's defense budget will rise by 7%, exceeding $39 billion, which is about 2.5% of the GDP. South Korea ranks 10th in military expenditure following Great Britain, Japan, and Germany.
One of the new items in South Korea's budget is the formation of war-drobots: robots combined with drones. They're capable of conducting surveillance coverage of North Korea's military facilities and striking if necessary.
Daria Kozlova, Daria Nafomova for Vesti.
