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Subscribe to RSSSEOUL, South Korea -- More than 250 flights in and out of South Korea have experienced GPS signal jamming since the weekend, with North Korea high on the list of suspects, officials said Wednesday.
Similar jamming in the past was traced to the reclusive North, which last month breached U.S. Security Council resolutions with a failed long-range rocket launch and was blamed for cyber attacks on South Korean financial institutions last year.
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Pyongyang refuses to let failed rocket launch dampen tone of festivities.
None of the flights, including 11 operated by foreign airlines, was in danger, the Transport Ministry said, with automatic switching of navigation to alternative systems.
North Korea threatens to reduce South Korea's government 'to ashes'
"As it happened at the time of (military) drills in 2010 and 2011, we suspect North Korea was engaged in jamming signals," a government official said.
Lee Kyung-woo, of the Korea Communications Commission, told NBC News that backup electronic systems maintained safety and that it and other relevant government agencies would continue to monitor the situation.
A Defense Ministry spokesman told NBC News that he could not confirm or mention what type of measures were to be taken against the North's suspected jamming.
North Korea has stepped up its rhetoric against the South in recent weeks, hurling personal insults at South Korean President Lee Myung-bak and threatening to reduce the capital Seoul to ashes.
The North is expected to conduct a third nuclear test soon, possibly using a uranium device that would infuriate neighboring countries and the United States, which have been involved in talks to try to rein in its nuclear weapons program.
The North's ability to wage cyber war from North Korea is seen by the South, one of the world's most wired countries, as increasingly sophisticated.
News reports said North Korea operates vehicle-mounted jamming devices that can disrupt signals up to 60 miles away and is developing systems with further reach.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
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Solution: Just fly the goddamned planes like they used to... you know... before GPS.
I don't know we as people should always be progressing to newer technologies. I remember when I went to see my cousin in California. He graduated with a degree in geography. When we went to San Fran by car and he gave me a map the size of a phone book. Said, "Start navigating." I joke and said, "What is this ancient technology, should I start using my sundial to tell the time too?" The point being is that we should focus on dealing with the sabotage instead of relying on the old ways to solve this crisis.
Wait till they get a working nuke.
Phenomenal112, Yes we should always be working toward newer and better technologies. But there is a caveat: if we don't know the old ways of doing the task the new technologies replaced, we are lost. (no pun intended).
Yeah, tell the co-pilot to break out the sextant and astrolabe!
Cut off all aid and let the people rebel like in the Middle East.
Also, list China as a supporter of terrorism if they continue aid.
Why are we still dealing with this when we don't hesitate to go into Iraq and Afghanistan ? (because we thought Iraq/Afghanistan was an easy win....like Viet Nam? chuckle)
Steve,
We only harass/invade the weak ones.
Oh those North Korean rascals! What will they think of next?
North Korea has been jamming navigational signals since just after the Armistice. They have historically jammed LORAN C navigational signals from land-based, mobile, and even "fishing trawlers" off Pusan. This is especially effective since 40% of Korea's population is crowded into the Seoul-Inchon Corridor along with most of their industry and their financial and political capital. Much of the forward-deployed US and ROKA forces are within range of their jamming. This is not so much an offensive capability as a defense against US cruise missiles and GPS-guided munitions such as JDAM bombs. The problem is that GPS signals are incredibly weak.
Pilots flying near North Korea of into South Korea from any direction are well-advised to watch out for "discrete" jamming of both GPS and LORAN. Mostly, airliners and military aircraft have three systems: GPS, LORAN, and inertial. LORAN is crap to begin with, so no big loss there. (I know that most pilots will disagree, but it is still crap.) But if GPS is lost to short-range jamming, inertial can carry the load with much more accuracy than most people realize since it is constantly re-calibrating to the last good GPS signal. 60nm on Inertial gives an accuracy of less than 1 meter. And where airfields are installing Differential GPS (DGPS) transmitters at airfields and geographically "known" sites that both add much more accuracy, reliability, and a good deal of immunity to interference.
Solution: nuke the idiots and get it over with.
They've proven that they are a pariah and a scourge upon the earth, they need to go.
@rockyroad
Wow... Terribly behind the times, Rocky. They've had nukes since at least October of 2006, when they successfully tested their first nuclear device. Here:
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/northkorea/nuclear_program/index.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korea_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction
Drop a bomb on them and call it a day. The world is already full of radiation from Fukushima.
Obviously that's what they are doing if the GPS is being jammed and not working.
Take 2 AGM-88E's every 4 hours and call me in the morning.
The North Korean whack jobs act like rotten spoiled children. There's a time coming when they'll get spanked, because allowing this nonsense to continue indefinitely will only encourage increasingly belligerent behavior.
Since I see no benefit at all from jamming the GPS of innocent passenger jets, what heading do we file this North Korean activity under? Being a$$holes for the sake of being a$$holes!
He might be a big tool, and the son of a brainless turd, but I'll bet he's smart enough to know a SCUD missle is made by Russia.
And a scud missile isn't really accurate. Don't think hitting a target a mile off course would be a direct hit.
I say take their challenge and kick their little ass. Let them keep talking smack or bust them in the chops. I say bust them right on the lips.
Hahaha denver bill, priceless.....
In 1968 the USS Pueblo, a navy "monitoring" ship was captured by North Korea(some people might remember the famous photo of the crew giving the camera the finger - telling their captors that it was a symbolic gesture like a peace sign that the crew was O.K.). Although the crew were released within a couple of months of incarceration, the ship is still in Pyongyang(look it up on google earth). One F-22 outside of NK airspace can drop a SDB(Small Diameter Bomb) and guide it straight down the smokestack and sink her. It is property of the United States so we are not attacking NK itself, just merely using our own property for target practice. Throw the NK government a couple mil to cover salvage costs and remind them just how far behind the rest of the world they truely are.
@metheman,
If the jamming is mobile, it can be very, very hard. You're talking about something the size of a breadbox on a jeep. And the jamming tends to be intermittant so that missiles like Shrikes cannot get a solid lockon. So the routine tends to be (in wartime) stop, jam for 5 mins, then scoot to another location, stop, jam, etc. The Vietnamese taught the world how to be very good at it.
If each culture represents a vision for the future of humanity, what kind of ugly future does the "republic" of North Korea represent? One only needs to look at the blank faces of the ruling N Korean military officers who managed to rise through the ranks of a militarized society and see the mean, inhumane nature of their culture. Since they cannot make war with their Southern neighbor, they seem to be at war with themselves. The army always wins as the peasants starve.
It's the very reason ET won't be visiting us anytime soon. Mankind is too warlike and mean.
@Charles,
One thing I have found very, very telling is that malnutrition among the non-military non-elite (about 60% of the people) is so bad that the IQ of the average North Korean is a full 15 points below that of an average South Korean. This is not something that can ever be fixed.
It used to be that South Koreans were 100% for re-unification. The 60+ age group still is. But as you drop down the "age slide" demographic and especially as you go up in education, you find that South Koreans watched very carefully as West Germany tried to assimilate the backwards and really screwed up East Germany. The lesson that younger and better educated South Koreans took away is that reunification would probably destroy their country economically and socially for decades. The North Korean people are probably not educable and would never be able to pull their own weight in a initiative-driven society.
im not to sure the thoughts of the people of north korea
but if i had an overweight president and fat military leaders
i would wonder why i was 5 foot tall and weighed 80 pounds
that says all
Not really. The North Koreans bought an illegal copy of the P90-X series from China and run it on their state TV. It replaces both food and religion :-)
So much for hoping that the new leader wouldn't be as big and imbecile as his father. Oh, well...
I guess it's time for us to break down and send another strongly worded letter telling them how unacceptable this behavior is and how if they refuse to stop it we will be forced to send ANOTHER strongly worded letter - and maybe even view their actions with alarm. That should show them what-for....
Stop sending any aid of any kind. Either China can feed them or they will starve until the people have enough and take their country back.
Let them starve to death.
I believe "breached U.S. Security Council resolutions" should actually read: "breached U.N. Security Council resolutions".
Unless of course the US has taken over running the whole world and forgot to tell the rest of us.
taking over the Un security council would be a good thing.
we are supposed to have satellites that can read a playing card from space.......if so, it seems like we could spot that chubby bassturd kim jon un and put a bunker buster right on his king sized bed some night......yah? please lets DO
@mister...
Satellites can't do that well under even the best of circumstances and with adaptive optics. Satellites can do no better than 1/3 better than the same distance --- around 150 miles --- point-to-point on earth. Air pollution is a major reason, but so are atmospheric moisture, clouds, dust, etc. That's a major reason that drones are used in surveillance roles --- they can reduce that distance to a mere 5-10 miles. But even with drones we seem to have a great deal of telling a terrorist group from a wedding party.
North Korea is oneof the most hardened military countries in the world. They have literally hundreds of major underground bunkers (mostly drilled into granite or basalt) that contain command-and-control, POL, food supplies, arms and ammunition, and shelters for the military. And they have hundreds more of decoys so that we can't tell the real bunkers from decoys. Just along the DMZ they have thousands of pre-surveyed artillery positions that are essentially tunnels drilled into solid rock and housing "peek-and-shoot" heavy mortars, artillery and guided and unguided missiles. The North Koreans have more "bunkers" than we have bunker-buster and MOAB bombs combined.
And do you think it would be a fair exchange to try a shot at North Korea and immediately lose 28,000 American GI lives along with over half of South Korea? That is what would happen.
NK is a tripwire. Neighboring China, it scares the crap out of the Chinese every time they act up. China views NK as their "satellite" and SK as the US Satellite. SK is too close to China but they can't do anything about it, just like Taiwan.
NK will overstep one of these days and open war is going to flare out and burn a lot of folks when it does. I wouldn't put it past NK to use a nuke, the only question is will they use it first or in desperation. Neither bodes well for Seoul.
A few points:
1) China's relationship with North Korea is similar to our relationship with Israel in many ways. Both are "rogue" states that seek to involve their larger "sponsors" like someone using the threat of their big brother as a way to bully others. Savvy political leaders in both China and the US realize that position and would give anything to be shed of thet "Tar Baby" without reprecussions, simply because of the fear that North Korea or Israel will eventually embroil the sponsor countries in full-scale war.
2) The hugest fear that China has --- and why it keeps several divisions of troops along the NK/China border --- is of millions of starving North Korean refugees fleeing into China. This would be a huge drain on China economically and a massive social destabilization.
3) Taiwan (Formosa) is a different matter. Technically the Taiwan government considers itself an autonomous province of China proper. The Chinese government considers Taiwan as part of China proper and just being administered by an outlaw government. The Chinese military could, on any given day, decide that they could re-take Taiwan and there would be little that we could do about it.
4) North Korea has played a dangerous game of brinkmanship ever since the Armistice. They know exactly what they are doing and are very calculating and sanguine about every step they take. But what they also know is that they hold all the aces. They know that they could virtually destroy South Korea in the first 15 minutes of any conflict and count on the US, China, South Korea and Japan to not respond in any meaningful way. The NKN sinking of the RoKN ASW corvette is a perfect example. There is nothing we can do to retaliate without exponentially increasing the risk of causing a North Korean mis-step. Every President since Eisenhower has wrestled with this loaded equation and not a one has ever been able to do anything about it. Clinton came the closest, but GW Bush dropped that ball like a hot potato.
5) South Korea is a trading partner with China and they have a good, albeit circumspect, relationship. Taiwan is also now a trading partner, but every thing they do is viewed with suspicion by the Chinese government.
Years ago, I was a North Korean intelligence analyst at the Far East Watch Center in Tokyo. I had friends on a Navy EC-121 that was shot down about 100 miles off the North Korean coast in the Sea of Japan. But I got to watch as embassy personnel and the 5th Air Force battle staff wrestled with trying to formulate a response. They simply could not come up with one, so they did nothing. And I got to see colonels crying in frustration over the military's helplessness against North Korea. And back then, we figured we could probably reduce some North Korean hardened targets by using air-dropped and missile-delivered nerve gases. But now that option, the only one short of full-scale nuclear attack, has been taken off the table.
40% of South Korea's population, industry, its financial and political capital, its major port, 28,000 American troops and 150,000 RoKA troops are all within heavy mortar range of North Korea.
North Korea has stated in the past they will shoot down civilian aircraft that strays near their coast line. Also least we forget. http://www.willyvictor.com/History/Korean_Shootdown/Korea.html. When they shot down one of our aircraft 90 miles off the coast line and 31 Americans were killed. This is a renegade country that has evil leaders that imprison the population and defies the UN and the rest of the World. It is NOT going to stop unless the World stops it, period. 60 plus years of this BS. This GPS jamming of civilian aircraft is against International Law. They do it because they can and knowing they will not be punished. Like a spoiled child that never gets punishment. In this case a dangerous child with weapons. No aid or help for N.Korea, pure and simple. Wake up World!
Jamming devices work both ways. North Korea keeps wanting to provoke an incident or war and it just shows how inbred a society begins to believe its own lies.
CHINA is using the N. Koreans as proxys being the sneaks that they are.
chris you should not call your owners and future employers the Chinese names
A brief perusal of the news this morning involving suicide attacks in Kabul and North Korea's antics added to all other acts of violence perpetrated against civilian populations around the world. One has to ask why do leaders of nations who profess to believe in the dignity of all human beings tolerate these acts against innocents? With all the tax money they collect and use to fund armies of awesome technological capability why the leaders of these nations don't eliminate these threats to the peaceful activities of us all? The answer is they use these incidents for their own political purposes at our expense. The leaders of the world have more in common with each other than with us and so are reluctant to effectively deal with the acts of violence perpetrated by members of their own group.
It's an ugly world and it's hard to trust those in power.
If Soth Korea is our ally, and is supposed to be kept up to current tech by it's allies, then how come some two bit regime that can't keep it's lights on and its people fed can create such havoc with the South's electronics, and can go out and hack into top secret files here in the US, etc...? Where the hell is our tech that should be able to block such attacks?
First these are civilian planes using GPS signals to navigate. N.Korea is blocking those signals by jamming devices. Why? Because they can and they know no one is going to do anything about it. Hackers are like roaches. Soon as you figure out how to stop them, they adopt like roaches vs insecticide and then you need to find something else to stop them. You see it all the time around the world where someone has hacked into top security sites. It's an ongoing process. This is the World WE ALL live in and its not a pretty sight. Someone will always try to cheat you, steal from you or kill you if they can. Human Nature and despicable.
GPS uses satellite signals, and is old tech dating back?? 40 or 50 years. Low cost and commercial additions are like 20 years old.
Jamming satellite signals on one or two wavelengths from close by is simple, just takes a more powerful signal.
Bad people do not represent the majority of humanity. Saying human nature is despicable is right up there with North Korean attacks.
We live with thieves, crooks , and scammers because people are mostly good and trusting or they would have no targets.
World History on the 1000's of Wars fought over Religion, politics, slavery, tyranny, power, greed (taking what other folks have just because you can), control of the masses. The sweeping of crimes committed by Organizations swept under the rug (Catholic Church is just one of many), burning women at the stake for witchery about 40.000. Killing folks because of non-believers, putting scientists into prison because they stated Earth not the center of the Universe or not flat. Hell there are thousand s upon thousands of of atrocity's against Human Kind. Pedophiles, rapist, murderers crimes against Humanity. Hello! You can name just about any Country in the World that has committed crimes against their own people or indigenous peoples. Mostly good? Maybe. But a hell of a lot NOT.
folks of that country.
Way past time for NK to start having some unfortunate consequences on its side - a ship or two sinks, unfortunate explosion at some of their armament suppliers, maybe even a colossal event when Kim Fat Wad is addressing the military leaders - cut off the head of the snake, and let it die at its own pace.
The child again causing more mischief to call attention to itself, eh?
Perhaps LightSquared set up shop in N.K?
North Korea depends on China's paranoia for its continued existence.
We have no way of influencing this.
My feeling is if we can produce massive amounts of low cost drone aircraft that it costs more for North Korea to shoot down than they cost to build, tell them this will be our response. Or even balloons with messages.
Missles designed to take out enemy radar are expensive, using them is an act or war.
Jamming GPS used by commercial airlines is also an act of war if allowed to be.
Jamming radio signals to toy with the south is one thing but jamming radio signal in hopes it will cause a pilot to crash a plane full of passengers should not be taken lightly..
Next we'll hear some N Koreans were accused of aiming laser sticks into the cockpits of planes passing the DMZ..
It is easy to say "just nuke'em already and get it over with", but that is not the way to go, even though it is tempting. They (N Korea) are going start something that will take so many lives, that WWI & WWII will look like a care bear picnic. China needs to be pressured into reeling in these war mongering fools.
The problem is that once NK gets a 'working Nuke', and they will, then it's going to be just a matter of time until some idiot in that military structure will fire it at someone. We all know this is what' coming and we refuse to do anything about it. No one wants another war, but doing something to contain these idiots before they let genie out of the bag is better that waiting till after they have a working nuke. They will 'miscalculate' and start something that will affect all of us!
North Korea...a little fish in a big pond, that makes a lot of noise.
C-L-O-W-N-S
The North Korean governing group is a bunch of losers with nothing to do but try to make trouble around the area.
Not one bit of U.S. aid should go there, food or otherwise.
Please get a pair. Start cyberattacking N Korea and watch how fast they stop. Whinning only encourages them.
Just treat North Korea like the spoiled child it is. Watch them carefully, but publicly just ignore it. Otherwise it will just keep acting this way.
Yes if it were just rhetoric. They have shot down planes, sunk ships, fired on S.Korean Mainland and killed folks. How scary would it be to live in Seoul and have someone just miles away threatening your very existence with War and possible Nukes?
Take a page from Reagan's Panama action. Don't talk about it..do something... instead of giving them money for food which they use for failed missile launches. I am certain S.K. could use more parking spaces north of the border.
Yada, Yada, Yada...ad nauseum
"we suspect North Korea was engaged in jamming signals," a government official said."
Please pay attention to the media speak... suspect not "know"... "a government official" no actual name. Also remember our economy starts churning on all cylinders when we attack other countries.
Coincidentally we are preparing to leave Afghanistan next year...350,000 troops coming home with nothing to do and no jobs. And...as an added attraction it's a communist country..not Muslim so everybody will cheer as we destroy,kill, and maim.
Goody!!!
Boy the truth hurts......I hate it when people are right!