US soldiers making maps of underground military facilities in North Korea

U.S. soldiers stationed in South Korea have been making sophisticated maps of underground military facilities in North Korea to better deal with threats posed by the North, a military journal showed Saturday.

U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) has been also running an education program for senior South Korean and American military officers to share information on North Korea's underground facilities and to jointly respond to the North's military threats, according to a contribution by Korean Army Maj. Park Sung-man in a journal titled "Joint Chiefs of Staff."

   The program, named "Underground Facility," was drawn up in the mid-1990s by the U.S. Army. Since last year, ranking Korean military officials have joined the program, which was introduced to USFK in 2007.

The move indicates growing alertness against North Korea's military threats as the North has been keen on building underground facilities that are presumed to be around 6,000 to 8,000, it said.

USFK has been making maps on such facilities based on accounts by North Korean defectors and other available information, it added.

"There is the need to grasp underground passageways that can be used by the North Korean leadership if emergency situations or war takes place," Park claimed in his contribution, "We need to find ways to track down and block their escape routes when they flee Pyongyang."

   North Korea is also known to be strengthening its decoy system in a bid to block surveillance on the North's underground facilities.

Park also said that South Korea needs to possess about 500 to 1,000 U.S.-owned Guided Bomb Unit-28, known as a bunker-buster bomb, which is designed to hit targets buried deep underground, to nullify such facilities in the North.