North Korea jamming

Officials in South Korea suspect North Korean engineers may be developing a new military jamming device that could have a range of up to 100 kilometers (60 miles).

South Korea's Yonhap news agency claims a North Korean defense ministry report to a parliamentary defense committee says the device will be used to disrupt military communications south of the border - mainly Global Positioning System (GPS) and radar signals.

The North's defense ministry has not commented.

But tensions remain high on the two Korea's shared border, where Pyongyang is alleged to have already deployed jamming devices that can disrupt GPS signals over a range of 50 to 100 kilometers.

And Seoul is concerned that Pyongyang may also be developing electromagnetic pulse (EMP) bombs. EMPs can paralyze communications by releasing electronic signals.

Mobile dropout

North Korea is said to be responsible for the sporadic failure of GPS receivers on naval and civilian vessels on the west coast of the Korean peninsula in August 2010.

Russia has so far supplied most of North Korea's jamming technology and the north's latest developments would supplement an estimated 20 existing types of jamming devices, according to the report from South Korean news agency Yonhap.

South Korean officials have attempted to substantiate their concerns, citing cases in March of this year when the South Korean military reported GPS navigational devices had malfunctioned.

These reports were taken seriously by the United Nations International Telecommunications Union, which a in April urged Pyongyang to stop disrupting communications signals in the South.

Mobile phone users in Seoul have also complained about bad connections but it's not cofirmed that this was because of any North Korean activities.

New missiles

Diplomacy in the past few months has raised hope for renewed denuclearization talks with the North, which the international community says is developing nuclear capabilities for military reasons. North Korea has denied this.

The North has technically remained in a state of aggression with the South since a civil war in the 1950s ended without a peace agreement.

The South often accuses the North of provoking it and says it was responsible for the deaths of four people on Yeonpyeong when northern forces shelled the southern island last November. Pyongyang says it was provoked by a South Korean military exercise in the area.

South Korea has now confirmed that it has ordered 50 precision-guided missiles from an Israeli company and will place them on Yeonpyeong and another island in the Yellow Sea called Baengnyeong.

Author: Zulfikar Abbany (AFP, Reuters)
Editor: Anke Rasper