US military denies report of sending spies to North Korea | WPN World People News

The US military on Tuesday denied a report that its commandos have been landing in North Korea to spy on underground military facilities there.

In a statement, the U.S. military said that the report in The Diplomat, an Asia-Pacific current affairs journal, had "taken great liberal license" with the comments attributed to a top U.S. general.

The Diplomat quoted Brig. Gen. Neil H. Tolley, commander of special operations for United States Forces Korea, as saying at a conference last week that both U.S. and South Korean commandos parachute into North Korea to conduct reconnaissance on underground tunnels that are hidden from satellites.

"Quotes have been made up and attributed to him," the U.S. statement said. "No U.S. or [South Korean] forces have parachuted into North Korea."

Colonel Jonathan Withington, public affairs officer for US Forces Korea, said some reporting of the conference had taken Tolley "completely out of context".

"Though special reconnaissance is a core special operations force (SOF) mission, at no time have SOF forces been sent to the north to conduct special reconnaissance," he said in a statement.

The Diplomat quoted Tolley as saying that the North had built thousands of tunnels.

"The entire tunnel infrastructure is hidden from our satellites," the magazine reported him as saying. "So we send (South Korean) soldiers and US soldiers to the North to do special reconnaissance."

The magazine quoted him as saying that the commandos parachute in with minimal supplies to watch the tunnels undetected.

Source: The Asia News.Net