South Korea’s Defense Minister accused the North today of attempting to jam military communications in the South during joint U.S. – South Korean military exercises, with the GPS-disrupting signals used in the attack being traced back to military bases in North Korea’s Kaesong and Mt. Geumgang/Kumgang. Along with that attack, a South Korean defector organization, citing sources inside the North, is blaming the North for a 3 March cyberattack on government and business websites in the South.
An earlier posting examined the GPS jamming attack on the South, but today’s defector report suddenly makes the cyberattack on the South Korean websites last week look a little more interesting. According to the report, the North was not only responsible for the attack (plus an earlier one on 7 July 2009), it was Kim Jong-eun, Kim Jong-il’s son and current heir to the throne, who was in charge of the attacks. While a single-source report from a website working toward regime change in the North is hardly definitive, it raises an interesting parallel for examining leadership succession in Pyongyang.
Continue reading Cyberwar in Korea – Kim Jong-eun’s Key to the Throne?