text: CLOSE S. Korea's Moon willing to hold summit with Kim Jong-Un Video provided by AFP Newslook 
   
   In this March 30, 2015, file photo, a South Korean Marine, right, and U.S. Marines aim their weapons during joint military exercises. (Photo: AP) 
   
   LONDON — A distinguished retired South Korean general warned that a U.S. attack on North Korea would be met by well-armed soldiers fighting with religious fervor to defend their homeland. 
   
   "I try to explain to the Americans — if we have to go into North Korea, it is not going to be like going into Iraq or Afghanistan. It’s not going to be like toppling (ex-Iraqi President Saddam) Hussein. This would be more like trying to get rid of Allah," said I.-B. Chun, referring to the Arabic word for God. 
   
   Chun, speaking at a London think tank late Wednesday, said. "I said to my team: Can you imagine what that would look like? (North Korean leader) King Jong Un and his family is a cult in North Korea." 
   
   The Kim dynasty has ruled North Korea since its founding in 1948. Its three leaders — first Kim Il Sung, then Kim Jong Il and now Kim Jong Un — have inspired an intense, devotional following that has kept them in power. 
   
   In her new book, North Korea: The Country We Love to Hate, political analyst Loretta Napoleoni described the isolated nation's ruling "juche" philosophy that values self-reliance and extreme nationalism "as a modern religion, similar to Scientology, a non-transcendental doctrine with a twist of absurdity and plenty of dogmas." 
   
   "I have had the opportunity to speak to North Korean soldiers who have defected to South Korea — and you cannot imagine how indoctrinated they are," Chun said. "These are people who have defected, and yet there is still an innate belief in their system which is close to ridiculous." 
   
   North Korea: Is There A Military Option To Counter The Threat? 
   
   Special guest speaker Lieutenant General (Ret.) I.-B. ChunFormer Commander, South Korea Special Warfare Command @Policy_Exchange 
   
   #PXKoreapic.twitter.com/cA2lQ7MgkW — Elliott Franks (@elliottfranks) January 10, 2018 
   
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   Chun, who retired 18 months ago after serving in South Korea's military for almost 40 years, rose as high as deputy commander of the First South Korean Army, a position that also involved leading the country's special forces. 
   
   According to Chun, who lives just 35 miles from the North's border, here are some of the challenges that allied forces would face in the event of war: 
   
   • The majority of the North's military infrastructure is deep underground, a reaction to the massive bombing by U.S. forces during the Korean War, which ended in 1953 with an armistice instead of a peace treaty. 
   
   • Every North Korean, starting at age 14, gets 100 hours of training each year on how to shoot a weapon, fire a rocket-propelled grenade, throw a grenade, pitch a tent and other survival skills. "North Korea is militarized far beyond the (West's) imagination," Chun said. 
   
   • While the North Korean air force is significantly outdated with about 1,000 old fighter jets, these planes would be used for kamikaze-style attacks instead of air combat. "They will load them with a lot of fuel, some bombs, and tell the pilot, 'That is your target and you need to destroy it,'" he said. 
   
   • The regime has chemical and biological weapons, which Chun estimates at between 2,500 and 5,000 tons. 
   
   • North Korea has artillery and rockets that directly threaten the South Korean capital Seoul, one of the largest metropolitan areas in the world with a population of 25 million people. 
   
   • The North's military has 1.3 million active members and 7.7 million reserves. It has 200,000 special forces, whose official name translates as "monkey units," a reference, Chun said, to the "doped-up disrupting role they would play" in any conflict. 
   
   • In case of a foreign attack or invasion, North Koreans would stay loyal to Kim in the immediate term. "They have a system where five to 10 families are organized into a group, and if a single person from that group misbehaves, the entire five or 10 families go to the gulag or are executed. So everybody spies on everybody else. It is a great mechanism for keeping people under control," he said. 
   
   Chun was also a national security adviser to South Korean President Moon Jae-in while he was running for office. Chun first gained prominence in South Korea in 1983 as a young lieutenant when he was credited with saving the life of a senior South Korean general during a terrorist bombing in Burma. Later, he became one of the most senior contact points for U.S. military commanders in South Korea. 
   
   He gave his assessment of the threats facing Seoul and Washington amid reports, including in The Wall Street Journal, that despite an apparent easing in tensions after this week's talks between North and South Korea for the first time in two years, the Trump administration is still teetering between launching a pre-emptive strike on Pyongyang over its pursuit of nuclear weapons or holding out for diplomacy. 
   
   "A lot of good talks are going on — a lot of good energy. I like what I'm seeing," President Trump said Wednesday. North Korea agreed to send a delegation to next month’s Winter Olympics in South Korea and to hold military talks aimed at easing front-line animosities. 
   
   Still, Chun said Pyongyang was ready for war and was "one huge barracks." 
   
   He said North Korea's latest missile test in November indicated it has an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of striking the U.S. mainland, including Washington, D.C. 
   
   "But that’s assuming it only has a 150kg warhead," Chun said. "If it had a 500kg warhead — which is what we think it would need to have nuclear capability — it probably would not reach the capital. The North Koreans do not really have that capability, and this is where the window still exists for them to cease. If they want to broker a deal with the Americans, they need to do it now." 
   
   Chun said that over the course of his military career he became convinced "if you want peace, the only proven lesson is you must prepare for war. Yes, there is a military option for North Korea. But it’s like having a toothache and having to pull out all of your teeth. It should be the last option — and heaven forbid we have to use it." 
   
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   CLOSE North Korea agreed Tuesday to send a delegation to next month's Winter Olympics in South Korea, Seoul officials said, as the bitter rivals sat for rare talks at the border to discuss how to cooperate in Olympics and improve their long-strained ties. Time_Sports 
   
   Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2D18liw ||||| But North Korea said it would not discuss its nuclear weapons because they were aimed only at the United States and not its "brethren" in South Korea, or Russia or China, showing that a diplomatic breakthrough to the global crisis remained far off. Chun is also a former national security adviser to South Korea's President Moon Jae-in when he was running for office. He first gained prominence in 1983 when as a young lieutenant he was credited with saving the life of a senior general during a terrorist bombing in Burma. Later, he became one of the most senior contact points for US military commanders in South Korea. When asked by Fairfax Media if the first talks in two years signalled any material change, Chun said his 39 years of military experience had taught him that South Korea needed to be ready because often the only proven pathway to peace is war. "You must seek peace but at the same time prepare ourselves for the worst," he said. Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un have traded barbs recently, increasing tension between the two countries. Photo: AHN YOUNG-JOON 
   
   But he said he was confident that, despite North Korea's nuclear and chemical weapons and cyber warfare capabilities, the United States would prevail. "There is no doubt in any South Korean's mind that if there's war that the alliance will win and it's just the fact that the sheer air power that the Korean and the United States - with British aircraft - that will hopefully come to our aid, can inflict on the North Koreans," he said. Ministers from North and South Korea exchange a joint press release following their first high-level talks in over two years. Photo: YONHAP "It's North Korea against the world at the moment." He said US President Donald Trump's confrontational tweets, in which he has threatened military action against North Korea, had spooked the country's leader Kim Jong-un. 
   
   Conservative MP and chairman of the British Parliament's foreign affairs committee, Tom Tugendhat. Photo: Latika Bourke "Right now they're a little off balance because of Mr Trump, so because of Mr Trump they're trying to figure out is he really crazy? Is he really going to do this or not? Mr Trump has put them off balance," he said. "My greatest fear is that the North Koreans are believing their own propaganda." But he said Kim's provocations, including repeated missile tests, had "awoken the average American" and given "all justification to get his arse kicked". Kim Jong-un 'like Hitler' 
   
   Chan said Kim views himself as akin to the Swedish royal family and is not crazy but is similar in temperament to Adolf Hitler. He said the Kim dynasty had created such a cult in North Korea, where citizens are indoctrinated, that ridding the country of the family would be less like deposing the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and more like trying to remove Allah in Muslim countries. "Can you imagine what that would look like? Trying to get rid of Allah in Afghanistan or Iraq?" Australia, Britain and the US have all named North Korea as the culprit behind the global WannaCry cyber attack that crippled the British health system and infected 300,000 computers across the world. Chan said Pyongyang's ability to hack systems worldwide should not be underestimated. 
   
   "North Korean cyber capability is right below nuclear capability in terms of threat." China prefers nuclear North to US in Asia North Korea ramped up missile launches last year and conducted its sixth and most powerful nuclear test, prompting a US-led campaign to impose some of the strongest international sanctions yet, which Pyongyang dubbed an "act of war". The international community, including Australia, has called on China to do more to contain North Korea. But Chan said Beijing had calculated that it would prefer a nuclear-armed North Korean neighbour than an increased US presence in its neighbourhood. 
   
   Conservative MP and chairman of the British Parliament's influential foreign affairs committee, Tom Tugendhat​, said Britain, Australia and the rest of the Commonwealth had a great stake in the Korean peninsula, although he cautioned against any direct British role in "tipping the balance". Tugendhat singled out Australia's high commissioner to Britain, Alexander Downer who attended the speech. "It's very good to see you here representing the great Commonwealth," Tugendhat told Downer. "We have this enormous shared trade culture but we actually have a lot more than that too that's less noticed," he said, adding that Australia and Britain were major investors in South Korean enterprises. 
   
   But he said this was a secondary priority compared with Britain and Australia's interests in upholding the international rules-based order. Loading With agencies Follow Latika Bourke on Facebook
target: – For anyone encouraged by North Korea's slight softening toward the South, Chun In-bum essentially dumps a bucket of cold water it. The retired South Korean general, who the Financial Times reports led his country's special forces, spoke to a London-based think tank Wednesday and outlined exactly what American forces would encounter should we decide to bloody the country's nose—or something more significant. He doesn't mince words: "I try to explain to the Americans—if we have to go into North Korea, ... it’s not going to be like toppling [Saddam) Hussein]. This would be more like trying to get rid of Allah." He describes the country as "one huge barracks" and the population as militarized far beyond the [West's] imagination. "A 14-year-old child in North Korea probably gets more than 100 hours of military training a year," the Times of London quotes Chun as saying. "By age 14, a child knows how to fire an AK47, fire an RPG, throw a grenade, pitch a tent and march 24 hours." And even things that may seem promising on their face—the North's estimated 1,000 fighter jets are aged—aren't, per Chun, who says those planes would be used kamikaze-style, USA Today reports. And there's not just the physical battlefield to contend with, per the Brisbane Times: "North Korean cyber capability is right below nuclear capability in terms of threat," says Chun. He also describes an extreme system designed to root out any dissent, whereby the country's families are grouped in units, and if one person "misbehaves, the entire five or 10 families go to the gulag or are executed. So everybody spies on everybody else."