South Korea Threatened 13 Times by Terrorists

Since 1994, South Korea has been threatened 13 times by terrorists such as al-Qaeda, according to Representative Choi Sung of the ruling Uri Party.

Rep. Choi said on Tuesday, at the National Assembly inspection of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, that based on the information provided by domestic information agencies and foreign anti-terrorism experts, 13 detailed terror plans against South Korea were discovered.

Rep. Choi said that according to a testimony by Neil Herman, a senior FBI agent who ran the Joint Terrorism Task Force, an elite group of FBI agents and New York police officers at the time of the bombing of the World Trade Center in New York in 1993, a plan to simultaneously bomb 11 airplanes flying over the Pacific Ocean was made in 1994. The plan, named “Project Bojinka,” was designed by Yousef, head of a terrorist organization supported by al-Qaeda, and an airplane leaving from San Francisco for Seoul was one of the 11 targeted planes.

Rep. Choi said that the 9/11 Report revealed the fact that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of the U.S. had obtained information on “Project Bojinka” in 1995, and that 9/11 was a slightly modified realization of Project Bojinka.

In 1995, Kalid Shaikh Mohammed, al-Qaeda’s number three man, boarded a plane in Manila, Philippines bound for Seoul on a fact-finding mission to check the air security conditions. Rep. Choi also mentioned that al-Qaeda’s military commander Mohammed Atif had ordered Nizar Nawar to sneak into Korea in 1999. Nizar Nawar is the presumed mastermind of a suicide truck explosion near the ancient Ghriba synagogue in the Tunisian island of Djerba in April 2002.

Rep. Choi said that one member of al-Qaeda entered Korea around August and September of 2001 to gather information on Korea, and that another member boarded a ship from New Zealand that arrived at Gunsan Port in October 2003.

“South Korea has been targeted by the terrorists even before the death of Kim Sun-il, and it is seriously worrisome that the Korean Peninsula might be under attack,” Rep. Choi said.

Hoon Lee dreamland@donga.com