Top Secret War Command Posts Ready for North Korea’s Provocations – Part 2

CP OSCAR Used When Retreating to the South of Seoul

Next is the CC (Command Center) Seoul, an underground bunker of the Combined Forces Command located within the Yongsan US Army Base in Seoul. It is also known as the US 8th Army Bunker. It is famous for where Defense Minister Roh Jae Hyun took refuge in the 12.12 Military Insurrection in 1979. It was first revealed in 2002 that it was being used by the US and South Korean command posts during peacetime. It is currently known not to be in use as the US military has moved to Pyeongtaek. It has been replaced by the CC Pyeongtaek bunker, a new bunker built at Camp Humphreys. During peacetime, it plays a role in consolidating various information, such as US spy satellites, U-2 reconnaissance aircraft, and standard monitoring stations. It is said to be smaller in scale than CP TANGO.

There is another place the US military uses, the Oscar bunker known as CP OSCAR. It is in the Camp Walker Lodge in Nam-gu, Daegu Metropolitan City. This bunker is prepared in case the South Korean and US forces fail to stop North Korea’s attack in the area north of Seoul, and it is a facility made assuming that the defense line will retreat to the area south of Seoul. Nothing more is known about it.

South Korea has four command and control facilities that it uses independently. First and foremost, the representative command post is the underground bunker of the Blue House. With the entry of the Yoon Suk Yeol government, the function of the President’s office was moved to the underground bunker of the Presidential Office in Yongsan. The name was also changed to the National Center for Crisis Management. It is a national security office-affiliated organization responsible for managing and responding to crises. When the center director appears to be a general official or special official belonging to the senior civil servant group, it can be supplemented by active-duty officers affiliated with the Ministry of Defense or employees of the National Intelligence Service. So far, 18 center directors have been appointed. All are active-duty generals, except for two from the National Intelligence Service and the Korea Defense Research Institute.

The underground bunker, which was equipped only with perfunctory facilities, unlike the US, has strengthened its stature since 2003, during the Participatory Government, when it was decided to establish a crisis management center within the National Security Council (NSC) office and build a comprehensive national crisis management system.

Among the solo command bunkers of the Korean military, the largest is the B1 Bunker, an underground bunker within the Capital Defense Command. This place became known to the outside as the presidents invariably visited in their first year in office as military commanders.

Former Presidents Kim Dae Jung and Roh Moo Hyun visited only once in their first year in office. Due to strong opposition from North Korea every time the Eulji exercise was held, the two former presidents did not often visit the B1 Bunker to avoid provoking North Korea. On the other hand, former President Lee Myung Bak visited several times during his term. Former President Chun Doo Hwan, a graduate of the Military Academy, is known to have brought his family to the B1 Bunker during the Eulji exercise and stayed for two days, personally directing the training.

To read Part 1…
To read Part 3…