S.Korean military stages rear-area maneuvers against possible DPRK terror attacks

South Korea's military on Monday carried out maneuver training exercises in rear areas against possible terrorist attacks from the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), Yonhap news agency reported.

The South Korean army's second headquarters of operations in charge of defending rear areas in the country's southern region commanded the maneuvers that mobilized about 250 South Korean special forces troops and some 20 helicopters.

The maneuvers assumed a situation, in which DPRK forces threaten terror attacks against key South Korean infrastructure facilities in the southern region.

The mobilized choppers, including South Korea's homegrown Surion helicopters as well as CH-47 Chinook and UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters, carried the special forces personnel to virtual enemy-infiltrating areas.

The maneuvers came in connection with the Foal Eagle field training exercise, a joint U.S.-South Korean annual war game that kicked off a week earlier along with the Key Resolve command post exercise.

The spring drills, which Pyongyang has denounced as a dress rehearsal for northward invasion, will last until April 30.

Worries spread in South Korea over possible DPRK terror attacks after Pyongyang's latest nuclear test and long-range rocket launch and the subsequent tougher-than-ever sanctions toward the DPRK.

The DPRK started off a new year with the test of what it claimed was its first hydrogen bomb on Jan. 6 and launched a long-range rocket, which was condemned as a disguised test of ballistic missile technology, on Feb. 7.

Pyongyang fired off six rounds of its new multiple rocket launcher into its eastern waters on March 3, hours after UN Security Council adopted new harsher sanctions toward the DPRK in response to the nuclear test and rocket launch.

In an apparent show of force, the DPRK fired two short-range ballistic missiles on Thursday in response to the U.S.-South Korea joint military exercises and Seoul's unilateral sanctions on Pyongyang, which included a ban on third-country vessels having docked at DPRK ports in the past 180 days from entering South Korean ports.

The National Intelligence Service (NIS), South Korea's spy agency, told ruling Saenuri lawmakers on Friday that the DPRK conducted hacking attacks on about 300 diplomatic, security and military officials of South Korea between late February and early March. Among them, some 40 cyber attacks succeeded.

The attacks, which Pyongyang called fabricated by Seoul for an impure political purpose, took voice and text messages and logs of phone calls from the 40 officials, according to the NIS.

The spy agency said last month that top DPRK leader Kim Jong Un had ordered officials to muster up capability for anti-South Korea terrorist attacks, which it estimated could target key South Korean government officials.

Lee Sun-jin, chairman of South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), has warned of various types of DPRK provocations such as cyber attacks, infiltration in rear areas and provocation with drones. Enditem