It wasn’t a tapped phone, a hacked computer or a double
agent that tipped off North Korea
that the U.S. Navy’s biggest and baddest aircraft carrier was steaming toward
the peninsula -- it was a perfectly innocent bunch of shutterbugs.
When Pyongyang’s state-run media agency mentioned the ship’s
itinerary in a news release, a day before it was first reported in the South
Korean media, alarm bells went off, according to the South Korean newspaper The
Hankyoreh U.S. and South Korean military officials initially feared a phone
tap, intelligence leak or hacked email account might be to blame, according to
South Korean media reports.
But it turned out that on Saturday
night, a Seoul-based camera association known as the “O” Club had told its
members that an aircraft carrier would berth in Busan on May 11, and that
people were needed to drive American sailors around, a South Korea Ministry of
National Defense said.
“… looking for two Busanites who
can drive and speak basic English,” read the message, posted on a photography
website. “A U.S. naval aircraft carrier is coming on the 11th and leaving
on the 13th, and you would just need to transport the U.S. sailors. Pay is 110,000 won ($101) a day. Two people
wanted. Send a message if you’re interested.”
Another post offered suggestions
on where to get good pictures of the massive ship. Someone in North Korea saw the ad and did some low-risk intelligence gathering.
Although neither post named the
ship, officials believe North Korea were able to put together the details using other
information already made public, including a post on the U.S. Navy’s website
last week that said the nuclear-powered Nimitz had entered the jurisdiction of
the 7th Fleet, a South Korean Ministry of Defense official said Wednesday.
The U.S. and South Korea are staging anti-submarine exercises this week, and the
Nimitz will participate in another joint naval exercise next week. Although the
exercises come as tensions are rising between North and South Korea, officials publicly sought to downplay the Nimitz’s
appearance.
“We are not trying to deliver any
message to North
Korea with
this exercise,” a spokesman for the South Korea Joint Chiefs of Staff said,
referring to this week's anti-submarine drills. “This exercise is for improving
the U.S.-South Korean war-fighting power.”
North
Korea has
vowed immediate countermeasures if even one shell fired during the joint
U.S.-South Korea exercises lands in North waters.
The U.S. and South Korea are trying to push “the present state of war to an actual
war,” according to a statement posted on the North’s government-run Korean
Central News Agency website.
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