The scenic Mount Myohyang of North Korea houses the International Friendship Exhibition Hall, displaying various gifts Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il have received and related photographs. Many visit the exhibition hall, but few know the fact that right nearby is an underground tunnel where all the exhibits in the hall can be stored away in time of war.

The North has all but completed underground tunnel projects where all necessary on-ground facilities can be moved underground in an emergency, while most munitions plants, concentrated in the mountainous Jagang Province, have been built underground. In addition, underground tunnels have been built to store away what are called Kim Il Song and Kim Jong Il relics such as their statues and photographs. Seeing Iraqi underground military bases busted during the 1991 Gulf War, North Koreans reinforced those projects that were then under way. "Though enlisted men were prohibited from watching the scenes of the Gulf War on television for fears of war horrors, officers watching them strongly felt the need of permanent underground facilities," reminisced a former People’s Army officer who defected to the South. Early in 1990 the supreme commander issued order No. 11 instructing an early completion of tunnel projects, and hence the tunnel projects under way then were called ‘No. 11 Projects.’

Military commanders in regions involved, and sometimes party organizations took charge of the underground tunnel projects. The second economy or munitions industry sector supplied quality raw materials like cement, reinforcing bars and lumber on a priority basis.

Engineers and senior officials mobilized for these projects were accorded the level of rations and salaries given to county party guidance officers. Ordinary laborers assigned to them enjoyed preference in the supply of beef, edible oil and clothing. To boost their morale, preferential party membership quotas, an object of highest aspirations by North Korean citizens, were also allotted.

"We drilled the deepest and hardest base rock layers in mountains," recalls Kim Song-gil, 34 (pseudonym), a North Korean defector who had been mobilized for an underground tunnel project in North Hamgyong province. "The entrance of a tunnel was designed to withstand the impact of a direct enemy attack. And one has to go down 300 meters below ground level to reach the entrance of the underground storing facility."

In the 1990s young North Korean males bored blasters with chisels and hammers, while blasting explosions were heard ceaselessly for several years.

Military-use underground tunnels are built wide enough for a brigade command to function and to accommodate all military equipment in relevant regions including armored vehicles and trucks. In public-use underground tunnels, priority was given to statues of Kim senior and junior and exhibits in revolutionary research institutes. Public-use tunnels have been constructed to accommodate up to 70% of paramilitary organizations like the Worker Red Guards and Young Red Guards. Built as complete underground fortresses, they are equipped with power, water supplies, and ventilation facilities.

North Korea built underground tunnels in earnest following its capture of the U.S. navy spy ship Pueblo in 1968, when Kim Il Sung instructed the fortification of the country. The Pyongyang subway, the first phase of which was completed in 1968, is over 100m below ground level so that it may be used as an air-raid shelter in war. The construction of underground tunnels across North Korea was accelerated in the wake of the 1976 butchering by North Koreans of American army officers in the joint security area of the armistice village of Panmunjom. Though they are believed to have been completed by the mid-1990s, some underground tunnels are apparently still under construction.

(Kang Chol Hwan, nkch@chosun.com )