N. Korea Puts New Missiles Along Border : Action Fuels Concern on Safety of Seoul Olympics

North Korea recently placed surface-to-air missiles at new sites along the demilitarized zone with South Korea, U.S. officials said Tuesday, raising new concerns about the safety of the Summer Olympic Games in Seoul.

The officials confirmed a report in the Washington Times that the missiles--Soviet-made SAM-5s, which have a range of nearly 200 miles--were deployed during the last two months within 40 miles of the demilitarized zone that separates the two countries. In addition, one source said that North Korea has also built new helicopter pads near the DMZ.

Over the last few months, American, South Korean and Japanese officials repeatedly have warned that North Korea may try to disrupt the Olympics to prevent South Korea from gaining new international stature and legitimacy. These officials have argued that North Korea may try some form of terrorist attack on the Olympics, rather than direct military action.

However, deployment of the new missiles raises the possibility of North Korean military action, either before or during the Olympics.

Possible Uses Listed

According to one U.S. official, the missiles are positioned in such a way that they could be used against American SR-71 Blackbird reconnaissance planes; to support a North Korean military invasion of the south; to shoot down a commercial flight, or to disrupt the Olympics themselves. Seoul is about 30 miles south of the DMZ.

Even if they are never used, the mere presence of the missiles heightens tensions in the months before the Olympics and thus could serve the North Korean purpose of making people afraid to go to South Korea to see the Games.

“We’re talking about your basic war of nerves,” said another U.S. source. The officials said that if North Korea had intended the SAM-5s to be used for defensive purposes, they would have been placed near the capital of Pyongyang, not close to the DMZ.

The Pyongyang regime has been linked to a bomb explosion last November on a Korean Air jetliner that crashed in the Andaman Sea near Burma, killing 115 people. A woman captured after leaving an earlier leg of that flight confessed that she had been working as an agent of North Korea.

On May 26, in an oblique reference to U.S. intelligence information about the new missile deployments, Gen. Louis C. Menetry, commander in chief of U.S. and U.N. forces in South Korea, testified before Congress that the North Korean SAM-5 missile, “depending on where it is deployed, presents a serious threat to air operations over most of the south.”

In Seoul on Tuesday, Defense Secretary Frank C. Carlucci said that North Korea’s threat to the stability of the Korean Peninsula remains as strong as ever. “Our forces will remain on the peninsula as long as they are needed here and as long as the Korean people want us to stay,” Carlucci said.

One U.S. source said that public disclosure of the North Korean missiles may indirectly serve the interests of the Pentagon at a time when questions are being raised, both on Capitol Hill and in Seoul, about the continued need for stationing U.S. forces in South Korea.

In his testimony before a Senate Appropriations subcommittee last month, Menetry termed “equally disturbing” North Korea’s possession of the Hughes 500 helicopter. He said this helicopter closely resembles helicopters that are flown by South Korea and raises the threat “of disguised infiltration or even an attack from a seemingly friendly aircraft.”

The North Koreans are said to be building landing pads for these helicopters in positions near the DMZ. The helicopters apparently were acquired by the North Koreans indirectly.