http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/northkorea/6759942/Pyongyang-has-secret-tunnels-for-Kim-Jong-il-defector-says.htmlThe tunnels were built almost 1,000 feet below ground, said Hwang Jang-yop, the highest-ranking defector to cross the border into South Korea.
The tunnels connect with underground railway networks and were built both as escape routes and as shelter for the reclusive Mr Kim, his family and top officials, Mr Hwang said.
He said leaders could escape to China by travelling through one tunnel linked to the port of Nampo, 25 miles south-west of Pyongyang, Mr Hwang said in an interview posted on Monday on the website of Seoul-based Free North Korea Radio.
Mr Hwang, former secretary of the North’s ruling Workers’ Party who defected in 1997, said Mr Kim and his family have an exclusive bunker linked by the tunnels to strategic points such as Suncheon and Yeongwon.
The North has a major uranium mine in Suncheon, 25 miles north of Pyongyang, according to South Korea’s unification ministry.
Kim Il-sung, Mr Kim’s father, was reportedly staying at his villa in Yeongwon, 30 miles north-east of Pyongyang, when he died in 1994.
Along with 150-yard-deep subway lines, which could be used as a wartime shelter for citizens, Pyongyang has “many other underground facilities and tunnels”, Mr Hwang said.
South’s Korea Institute for Defence Analysis says the North has some 8,000 underground military facilities.
pic: h/t telegraph cir 2008 (grinning slugs)
