A senior Defense Ministry official in Seoul says that North Korea’s advantage over South Korea in terms of asymmetric warfare has become an increased threat to South Korea.

Based on data obtained by the ministry, the North is estimated to have 200-thousand asymmetric special warfare forces, between 25-hundred and five-thousand tons of newly developed chemical weapons, 150 missiles, and the capability to produce five to eight nuclear weapons.

South Korea has 20-thousand special warfare forces, a third as many missiles, and no chemical or nuclear weapons.

The South Korean military supplements its combat capabilities through its alliance with the U.S. in order to make up for the difference.

The ministry official says that the North’s overwhelming superiority in terms of asymmetric warfare is the biggest threat to national security and that this new threat assessment has been included in Seoul’s defense white paper this year.

One defense-related civic group in Seoul predicts that if the North fires all of its rockets deployed near the border at one time in a sudden attack on metropolitan Seoul, the initial shelling would damage an area four times the size of Yeouido.