North Korea News Podcast by NK News - Kim Jong Un’s hospital visit, damaged warship’s voyage and DPRK election report

Episode Date: June 10, 2025

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un inspected a hospital construction site in Kusong on Monday, where he criticized the skills of the military conscripts he frequently mobilizes for major state construction projects. NK News Senior Analytic Correspondent Colin Zwirko joins the podcast to talk about Kim’s comments, as well the voyage by North Korea’s damaged […]

In the intricate world of Korean affairs, tailored intelligence makes all the difference. Korea Risk Group's consulting services offer specialized, actionable intelligence designed to guide your career-related decisions. We provide bespoke consulting services that cater to your unique challenges and goals. From policy analysis to market entry strategies, we bring clarity to complexity. Transform uncertainty into opportunity and visit career the NK News podcast. I'm your host Jack O's Wetzel and this episode is recorded on Tuesday the 10th of June 2025 and I'm joined here in the studio by Colin Zwirka, my fellow Zedman. Colin, welcome back on the show.

Hello fellow ZW man. We have breaking news. We also have a W in common. Breaking news, Kim Jong Un rushed to a hospital. Yes, he's seen at the hospital for the second time in the last week. Goodness me, is he ill? No, so he's visiting a hospital construction site. Oh, well done. That's some sort of a head fake there. Okay, so now I remember there was a hospital in Pyongyang that took five years to complete that was the big general hospital. Yeah. What's this one? Another one? That one is the big one in Pyongyang and he's

supposed to finally open it in October this year. Oh heck it hasn't even opened yet. No yeah because they were trying to get medical equipment to furnish the whole thing so they basically built the whole thing and then left it kind of you know they couldn't acquire the equipment. It's expensive, it's sanctions, you know that kind of stuff. Okay, but this is a new, a different hospital. Yeah, so he says he wants to build a hospital in 20 counties or cities per year for 10 years

as part of that 20 times 10 rural development project. The big project, right. So he's kind of, he was promising that last year that they would start building 20 hospitals per year It wasn't so explicit when you go back into it, but he suggested that it would start this year But instead they're building three pilot projects this year of three different sizes. So that's uh, yeah You know other in or around Pyongyang two of them are I think and then one of them is up in Kusong which is a

lot of these projects and under the 20 times 10 rural development project a lot of the ones that are being chosen are in Heavily military oriented towns, although you know the whole country kind of is but so the one that he was seen at most recently Yeah today in state media. He was up in Coussaint So this is a place he just visited most recently to check out a tank factory Mm-hmm state media didn't say that of course, but we could tell that it was up in Kusong. And how far is that from the capital? It's up in North Pyongan province.

So it's up in the Northwest. So it's a long drive or a short flight, I suppose. Yeah. Okay. And so yeah, he's just checking out. I would say the interesting thing about this is that Kim Jong-un is basically only showing up at military related inspections in the last, you know, however many months. So far this year, almost all of them is military oriented weapons, factories, training.

It's all related, you know, his big thing right now is he's in the war in Ukraine. So this is a military hospital, which- No, no, no. Oh, no. But my point is that his outlet for doing, you know, improving the lives of citizens, that line of his, part of his leadership, his outlet for that is this 20 times 10 project. So really every month he'll show up at one factory site

or hospital or leisure complex as part of this 2010. So it's become this this outlet for him to show the people he still cares about them while in reality most of his attention seems to be on the military. Now if they've had trouble equipping the first large general hospital in Pyongyang with facilities then they're gonna have a lot more difficulty getting you know equipping 20 of them each year for the next 10 years Yeah, we shall see so

They're not super clear yet on whether or not the 20 per year thing will start next year Or if they'll keep on with this pilot programs He said in his last visit last week to the one near Pyongyang that he's trying to to the one near Pyongyang that he's trying to gauge how it goes and that they wanna like make their construction process based on how this year's projects go. But then today, the main point of the state media report today was that the construction workers,

the military conscript construction workers are quote unskilled, immature, unprofessional, and that's a big problem for construction workers. That's what he's saying. Yeah. Oh. What he means is that they don't have the skills. Of course, that's his fault because he's been in charge of the military conscript construction

worker system during his entire time in power. But what he's talking openly about it because he wants underlings to fix it. So he's calling for a conference to be held next month on construction workers. But the thing is they just held one in 2022 where he talked about basically all the same stuff and nothing was fixed. So what's gonna change this time? All right, now give us an update on the ship launch

that didn't go well over there in Chongjin port on the East coast. Yeah, so May 21st, so today's June 10th, May 21st, Kim held a ceremony to launch this new warship, the second one of this destroyer class warship. The first one they launched in April on the West Coast, so this was up on the East Coast. State media came out immediately a day after to say that the launch failed, that the ship capsized on its side. This is one of those ships that they were, this was a launch in which the ship is kind of

side launched. Slid into the water length way, so side on, and then it kind of, if you see it done well, it looks like it's about to fall over, but then it writes itself. Yeah. Right, but this one it didn't. Right, State Media hasn't showed us any video

or photos of this event, but they came out and admitted it quite quickly a day after it happened. I assume that that's because there were hundreds of people there at the ceremony watching this. I mean, can you imagine? No. Can you imagine? I mean, we saw the video on KCTV of the April ship launch. The one that was that succeeded. Yeah. And it's a huge event. They put a lot of production into this. They built facility. They built viewing stands. Yeah. All kinds of stuff. And we saw in satellite imagery,

they built this stuff at Chungjin too. And that's probably the reason why they came out and admitted it because it was, it was gonna spread that news. So yeah, but anyway, it took them, they initially said it would take a few days, two to three days to lift the ship upright. It ended up taking about a week more than that.

They finally lifted it. Then Stead Media gave us an update finally last week. And then we saw that it was lifted and they said they would move it up to Rajan shipyard up in Rassan for repairs about 50 miles to the north for, for, for the repairs and that should only take about 10 days. And so, yeah, we've seen in satellite imagery that it moved up to there on Sunday and now they're going to do whatever they do to get it fixed up in time for the party plenum that we're looking forward to at some time on the

end of this month where we can expect Kim Jong-un to talk about the ship. We expect him to maybe talk about the South Korean election, maybe talk about Trump, you know, I wouldn't put too high hopes on that, but that's a venue for all kinds of stuff to happen. Yeah, just quickly on the election, there has been an acknowledgement that an election took place and a new person has been elected, but there's not been a lot of coverage on that, right?

Yeah, state media gave a two sentence report, I guess it was the two days after, or the morning, like 24 hours after the results were announced so um that was last week and the two sentences said that it gave the the number of the election which was with the 21st 21st presidential election and they gave the name of the the guy who won and then they didn't give any indication of what his party affiliation is, what his leanings are, liberal, conservative, whatever.

Of course, they say that this was the 21st time that people have elected a president, which is kind of interesting. But that is interesting. But yeah, no indication. North Korean without access to other channels of information would have nothing to go by. They'd be like, oh, it's just another leader of this place that we're told to hate. Very neutral turn of manner. Back to the ship there for a moment. I saw in some non-NK news reporting some story about a large number of balloons above or around that ship launched. Did you see that in the satellite imagery?

Yeah. So these are balloons that look like four or five meters across, maybe kind of picture the kind of balloons that you see used in South Korea for sending leaflets across the border. Maybe that kind of size, although it's kind of hard to tell. And that you could see in the satellite imagery that they were above the ship. So typically, I'm not an expert on this,

but I've read about when you're trying to raise a half submerged ship or something like that you might use some sort of balloons underwater put them into the ship try to give some buoyancy yeah and then this use of balloons above the ship would be not so conventional thing and it got a lot of media coverage because it sounds strange, right? Right. And this is kind of the theme of North Korea's strange country stories, right? Sure. In the end, we don't know how much these contributed to raising the ship. I don't think I've heard any experts say that they think that the balloons like lifted the ship out of the water or something. Like, it could actually get out of, you know,

maybe it'll go away from them and it'll end up in South Korea. Wow, yeah. No, I'm kidding. But they ended up lifting it somehow. Maybe those were some experts have written that that was just for kind of preventing it from totally sinking or something like that, but not for. Yeah, interesting.

Okay, now you're working on a story that this is a bit of a teaser for our listeners. You're working on a story that this is a bit of a teaser for our listeners. You're working on a story that this episode will come out on Tuesday, but your story will come out tomorrow on NK News. Yeah. But give us the listeners a bit of a teaser. What are you writing about? Yeah, this is interesting.

There is another new luxury mall that has opened in Pyongyang. For shopping? For shopping. Okay. So for shopping, for shopping. So the topic of how middle-class or wealthy Pyongyang residents are living these days is kind of, it's still kind of an enigma to be like, we don't, you can kind of check it out on social media, especially since there have been more Chinese students entering the country, living there on a daily basis. These aren't, these aren't tourists.

These are students who are posting on social media. On Chinese social media. On Chinese social media. So the Chinese are on TikTok. Or on Twitter or something like that. They're living the life in Pyongyang that you would expect to see in Seoul for exchange students or in Beijing. There's a lot of nice restaurants, sushi restaurants, hot pot restaurants, a lot of these malls. And so basically the story that we're coming out tomorrow is yet another new mall with a fake Ikea store with actual Ikea products.

Yes. Okay. I saw that back in 2019. But another one. Another, yes. So there's another one. They're really into Ikea. They're really into Ikea.

And China has been for a long time too, as I recall. Right. And, and a Starbucks copycat. So the, while the, while the Ikea is the IKEA is actually using IKEA products and IKEA advertising, this coffee shop is blatantly copying Starbucks Reserve. They have the little horizontal line and the R under it, but it's a different logo.

And this mall has connections to Japanese investors. Japanese, but surely they wouldn't be able to use Starbucks Beans or mugs or things like no They're all their own brand, but they're blatantly copying Starbucks Reserve I'd wonder where they get you know, okay little bit of a tangent here But in Australia a few years ago There were these stories about cafes that were broken into at nighttime when they weren't open And people walking off with these very expensive high-pressure espresso machines for resale on the market apparently in Asia

because there was a shortage of the good espresso machines. I'm just wondering where is Pyongyang getting its good espresso machines from? Could you imagine as an object made out of some sort of stainless steel, that's probably a sanctioned item, right? I'm going to clue you into something. Go on. Sanctions aren't really a thing. Oh. I'm gonna I'm gonna clue you into something going sanctions aren't really a thing. Oh

North Korea is Importing hundreds of trucks cars farm machines all these things from China Espresso machines, I'm sure all these things are prohibited by sanctions and nobody cares It's China does not try to enforce this. No one can enforce this its Sanctions aren't effective. So I would assume that they're just purchasing it outright from someone in China and they have the money, the investors, the investor side, that's one topic, but I think it's really interesting just consumerism

in Pyongyang is really interesting these days. Now, is this a mall that's already open or about to open? It's open. Okay. So just, yes, conditions are very questionable in many parts of the country, but people in Pyongyang are living, are getting access to this kind of lifestyle that you would expect to see in Beijing or Seoul in certain aspects, you know? And so there are outlets and options for people with money to, to enjoy themselves in a real modern kind of way.

For donju. Yeah. Okay. now in our last minutes remaining to us, give us a quick update on the Wonsan Kalma Resort over there on the peninsula near Wonsan on the East Coast. Apparently after all these years, it's just about ready to open. Yeah, it's scheduled to open in June, sometime in June. Oh, that's this month. There's no date, but IOTX, we're kind of watching it in state media or in satellite imagery. And they've in the last few days, they've gotten rid of a lot of the temporary worker structures, they've paved a lot of new roads, they paved the airport, parking lot and the terminal side, you know, the plane parking apron.

Yep. So they are getting ready to open this probably any day now, maybe, maybe this week, maybe next week, there'll be a big ceremony with Kim Jong-un. And then it remains to be seen what level of access foreign tourists have to it. But I assume we'll start to see a lot of coverage of domestic tourists groups visiting.

That would be students, workers from various factories, probably will be shown going there on a regular basis in the summer months. I remember originally it was supposed to be, you know, sort of slated to be a place for South Korean tourists to come if North and South rapprochement continued when it was floated back in 2019. That obviously hasn't happened, doesn't look like it'll be happening anytime soon, nor does Western tourism. So what if international tourism does begin, it would be Russians and Chinese, I imagine, to one sun come.

But it's a big place, right? There are tens of thousands of rooms and apartments there, right? Yeah, it's big. It's gigantic. Uh, yeah. And now I don't have it right in front of you, but I believe it's like, gosh, what is the beach? It's like seven kilometers long or something.

The beach, it's, it's, it's, if you tried to walk from end to end of this resort and the resort is situated along this peninsula beach, white sand beach. I would say like, of course that the tourism experts have, have gone back and forth on what they've been told by the North Korean side, and I mean the tour agency people, the Western tour agency people, but from what I've gathered in the last couple of years, it can flip on a dime. So they might be telling them now that it's not going to happen, but the way that just physically this place is set up, the way that it's isolated from the

rest of Wonsan, the way that you can arrive at the airport, which is directly connected to the resort. If North Korea wants to make some money from this place, they don't have a whole lot of political obstacles in their way, in my opinion. They could tell the Western tour companies if they could get things situated with direct flights from Beijing to Wonsan or whatever, that start booking tours here and then we'll see some level of interest, of course. And for North Korea, it would be a boon in that not only would you be bringing in some

cash tourism, but it's a It's a great place to sequester tourists from the local population, right? Yeah, they're not gonna be wandering around the streets looking at North Korean houses and trying to shop at North Korean shops ideal for North Korea the some of the tour agency people have said to us that that's not attractive to specialist tourists niche tourists that would even be That this kind of tour would be even be on the radar. People want to see the real North Korea. I think it would get a lot of interest at first. It's hard to say, but I think it's better than nothing for the North Korean side and people would go. Chinese tourists could go too. The

Chinese ambassador has been talking a lot about tourism, wanting to see Chinese tourists could go too, you know, the Chinese ambassador has been talking a lot about tourism, wanting to see Chinese tourists come into the country. He's been going around North Korea in the last couple of weeks. So, yeah, I don't quite know what is holding them back from from restarting the full Chinese tourists. That's a whole other topic that we have covered. For this and all other stories that we've just talked about today, you'll find at nknews.org. So go check them out. Colin, thanks very much for coming on the show again. Thank you, Jackal.

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