North Korea News Podcast by NK News - More North Korean missiles, US-ROK drills and a nuke submarine inspection

Episode Date: March 11, 2025

North Korea launched “multiple unidentified ballistic missiles” toward the Yellow Sea on Monday afternoon, according to the South Korean military, hours after the U.S. and ROK kicked off large-scale springtime joint exercises. NK News Deputy Managing Editor Alannah Hill discusses the DPRK’s criticism of the U.S.-ROK Freedom Shield exercise as an “aggressive and confrontational war […]

the your T-shirt celebrating DPRK's golden era of aviation in vintage airline chic. Explore the stars with our Nada hoodie, inspired by North Korea's answer to NASA. Or toast to tradition with our Taedonggang beer T-shirt, capturing the essence of North Korea's renowned brew. Each design is a conversation starter. Find yours at shop.nknews.org. Again, that's shop.nknews.org. on the the Hello and welcome to the NK News podcast. I'm your host, Jack O's Wedslut and this episode was recorded on Monday, the 10th of March, 2025 and I'm joined here in the studio by our managing editor

Alana Hill. Hello, welcome. Thank you so much for having me. I feel like it's been ages. It might have been. It's got to be at least a few weeks, this rotation scheme works. So we've got so much to talk about. So much. Lots of things going on. Where should we begin? I suppose with our most recent news we had a ballistic missile launch this afternoon. How could I forget forget that was only what two hours ago? Within office hours which we're always grateful for. Not much yet has come out from that we haven't heard from the Ministry of Defense yet. What we do know is that North Korea launched multiple unidentified ballistic missiles toward the Yellow Sea this afternoon and

they came from an inland area of Hwanghae province around 1.50 p.m. the JCS says likely these are in response to Freedom Shield which kicked off today. Right this is the annual spring exercises, joint combined exercises between the armed forces of the Republic of Korea and the United States as I understand it. Exactly. Yes. So they kicked off today, scaled up in terms of how many drills that are happening. About 19,000 troops are taking part. Big number. Yes. So I actually think, Jack, the last time I was on, we were talking about this statement from Kim Yo-jong,

the last time I was on we were talking about this statement from Kim Yo-jong, the sister of Kim Jong-un who said was threatening an escalation based on Freedom Shield happening and based on this USS Carl Vinson I think is the correct name, had arrived. So I mean we can kind of guess that this is in response to those drills kicking off today. Yeah and there was a story over the weekend or just before the weekend in which she or somebody from North Korea said these drills are escalating tensions on the Korean Peninsula. And so just to make things better, a bit of sarcasm here, North Korea decided to launch some ballistic missiles into the air.

Yeah, well, North Korea normally refers to these drills as an aggressive and confrontational war rehearsal. And so also today in state media, they were referring to what happened on Thursday last week when South Korea was as a precursor to these drills, doing their own exercises with the Air Force and had a bit of an accident dropped eight bombs from two different fighter jets onto civilians civilian a civilian area in Pochon now luckily no one was killed very very luckily very very lucky I think people were injured right yeah and I think the last count today was something like a hundred and

fifty homes and buildings were damaged. That is a shocking number. A huge, yeah. And so in response to that today in state media, we saw North Korea calling that accident a disaster. So yeah, again, that was a bit of a precursor to the Freedom Shield that kicked off today. Wow. Yeah, years ago in another life when I worked in the tourism industry, I went to a live firing range up in Porychon. And I remember thinking at the time, how do you in a small mountainous, densely

populated country like Korea, how is it even possible to have a live firing range when they also had a live bomb dropping range as well in the same area in Port Chon and sometimes with these systems, you know, computer controlled systems accidents happen in this case here, eight bombs were dropped from multiple planes. Yeah, so this is, there was two planes. What we've heard so far is that in the first plane, they're saying it was pilot error and the investigation is still ongoing with the second plane what happened. Apparently the pilot had entered the wrong coordinates and didn't double check and the top commander the Air Force committee and has apologized I mean talk about a bad day at the office it's yeah

remember they used to in the old days go and bomb uninhabited islands off the coast of Korea that probably made a bit more sense. So also, as I suppose a repercussion from that, the freedom drills that kicked off, sorry, the freedom shield, freedom shield? Yeah, freedom shield, you were saying, yeah. The freedom shield drills that kicked off today and won't have any live fire exercises in them anymore because of what happened on Thursday.

Goodness me, okay. Which to me seems like a bad idea. Maybe we need more practice with the live fire stuff. Well you've got to choose your location carefully. Exactly, yeah. Oh my gosh, gee. But to come back to those adjectives that Kim Yo-jong was using about the Freedom Shield exercise, which is that they were aggressive, something, something?

Yeah, North Korea has referred to these as aggressive confrontational war rehearsal. I wonder if they use the same words to describe the firing of ballistic missiles in the direction of the yellow sea. That would be a question for North Korea that I can't answer. Kim Yo-jong, if you're out there, if you are listening, we'd love to have you on the show. Okay, so let's talk about something different then. Yeah, so we'll take a little turn. Tourism, we've had so many stories back and forth and back and forth.

We have ended an interview with two tour guides live from Yanji Airport, just hours out of Rasong. Yeah. But now they've closed the door again. Yeah. And, you know, unfortunately, at that time, they were so enthusiastic and optimistic about what was to come. Following that, a couple of tour groups went in.

Yeah. I think there was two separate times that tour groups went in and came out safely. And then, you know, just to just last week, it's announced that all tourism stopped again to race on. So, yeah, coming from the North Korean side, that there'll be no more tours to that area. So it's all closed off again. So I have some some new information that I've received just this afternoon. Hot off the press. Hot off the press or hot off my signal chat from Rowan Beard of Young Pioneer Tours, YPT, who is one of the two guides I interviewed recently and he's just had some meetings today with his North

Korean tour partners and he said that apparently, okay there's a couple of factors involved here but the major problem here is the crossing of the border from China into Rason from the Chinese side. The Chinese are not working well together with their – or at least there are some issues that need to be smoothed over and ironed out between China and North Korea in getting people across the border from Hunchun, I guess it is, which is the nearest large city, into Rason. So that's something that needs some more work. Plus also, there's the other issue, but it's not the major one,

because this border crossing thing is not just stopping Western tourists coming in. It's also being an impediment to Chinese business delegations who would like to go to Rason. So they're also being held up in the border crossing. So it's not just a tourism thing. But in the tourism space, Pyongyang is also aware of recent reporting that's happened, for example, by the BBC and other places where Rowan and other people have been quoted, and they're not exactly happy.

These are not stories that they're thrilled with, but that's not the only reason why there are issues up at the border crossing in Rwanda. So I think it's mainly from the Chinese side. And that was an issue, I think Rowan mentioned in my interview that that was something that had to be sorted out beforehand and they didn't find a long-term solution. What they did was they found a short-term fix that got the first couple of tours in, but they needed to find something more lasting.

There may be something going on. This is me speculating here, maybe some political issues. We've talked about this before about North Korea and China not having the smoothest relationship right now. So maybe there's something going on there and someone's trying to send a message. I'm not sure, but anyway, that's that's something that's going to be fixed up, not just for tourists, but for Chinese and other people, just business delegations too. Yeah, I mean, it sounds like it's just such a delicate operation.

Very delicate. And either side can, you know, change their mind any moment and it's just all stopped again. A lot of moving paths. Yeah, exactly. Now, what we have seen on Koryo Tours website, though, is that the Pyongyang Marathon is set to go ahead. Which is four weeks from yesterday. Right. So it's coming really, I mean, they don't, not a lot of time there to smooth that one out. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, there have been talk, especially from the Russian ambassador

to North Korea has talked about Russian participants. Apparently a record number of Russian spectators will be going. So it'll be interesting to see, does that still go ahead if Western tourists and Chinese delegations are still not allowed back in the country, but Russians are. Right, well, of course, they'll be crossing the border from Russia, so no problems at all there. And if there is an issue with China, they wouldn't be able to, you know, that would not affect Russian tourists.

Exactly. That's what I mean to say. So yeah, it'll be interesting to see whether the marathon goes ahead four weeks from now and whether there'll be any international people in there. Participants. Participants in it. Yeah, exactly. Very, very vague at this stage, very uncertain. Yes, yes. Also today we had a great story from our Collins Worko who has found on satellite imagery that North Korea has started work on this ski resort. Is this the Masjidryong or another one?

No, it's in Samjeong. Oh right, yes, yes, yes. The sort of the sacred city up near close to Bictorsan. Exactly, exactly. So, and part of his story was again, speculating because of the importance of this city in North Korea. Is this just for propaganda purposes? Is it actually going to be open up to Russians or other tourists? But yeah, he's noticed that work on this is progressing quite quickly. There is a new ski slope built.

There was a construction camp for workers erected. And also an extension of train tracks, which he says is probably to carry materials and things like that. So yeah, it's very up and down, back and forth with tourism and what's happening. So just have to wait and see. Is there a good hospital or clinic built nearby for the inevitable broken legs and other injuries?

I'll have to get him to look into that. I'm not sure. I think, you know, that for me is a, if I'm going, I'm not a skier, but if I were, I'd be looking to make sure that I don't have to be airlifted out with a broken leg. That's a pessimistic outlook. Hey, I'm quite accident prone as it happens. So, so that's tourism, that's the freedom shield. What else we got? I suppose the last we can finish up on today is a story from over the weekend. Again, Colin wrote this story based on some state media that came out of Kim Jong-un visiting

the country's first nuclear-powered submarine. This is a big deal because not everyone has the technology, the capacity to build a submarine that's powered by nuclear turbines. I remember a few years ago there was a picture of sort of a large piece of basically it was a huge tube that Kim Jong-un was either standing in or in front of and this was to be a submarine that was you know in the process of being built. Yes, so the last time that we saw this in state media I believe was January last year and then the reporting over the weekend

I think there was only actually like two pictures that showed this submarine. But what was interesting to note was that he also inspected these two new large warships. Right, frigates I think, hadn't they? Yeah, so they were at two locations, one on each coast. And so he came down and says the plan is to deploy these as soon as possible and that they won't be restricted to any certain waters. Which means they can go out of North Korean territorial waters into international waters. Yes. I think that's what they call a blue ocean navy, if I'm not mistaken.

Is it? Right, I didn't know that. Yeah, so it's able to go out there basically anywhere. Yeah, and the pictures are fantastic as well. I'll link in the show. Yeah, I did go through all of them. The scale of it, it's just amazing. They're both the submarine and the frigates.

Also, one of the photographs shows a previous visit of Kim Jong-un to the submarine plant factory, whatever you want to call it, in which he was looking much similar. And then I had to look at the, oh yeah, the caption. Sure enough, it was from 2013. For a moment there, I thought, he's looking better than when I last saw him.

But then I realized it was a decade old photograph. Okay, oh no. Yeah, but there are definitely some great photographs. Thanks, Colin, for putting that together. So check that out on the NK News website. Yeah. And I mean, it's a fair play to North Korea. I mean, it's a feather in their cap to be able to be building these things, you know,

largely on their own without outside help. So not everyone can do that. So well done on that. Just wish they'd spent a bit more resources on some of the other things that you know. Of course, yeah, absolutely. Okay, well, thanks for walking us through those stories there, Alana, and we'll see you again very soon. Thanks for having me.

Bye bye. Looking to stay informed about South Korea's fast evolving political business and cultural landscape? Join us on Korea Pro, the go-to resource for in-depth analysis, expertly curated by top-tier professionals. And now you can pick the membership level that best suits your needs, thanks to our new subscription packages. Starting at just $199 annually, you can access daily analysis and our weekly podcast.

Or try our premium membership package, which offers additional perks such as executive briefings, monthly reports and forecasts, networking receptions and event opportunities, as well as much, much more. To find the best fit for you, just head to signup.careerpro.org and become a member today. Ladies and gentlemen, that brings us to the end of our podcast episode for today. Our thanks go to Brian Betts and Alana Hill for facilitating this episode and to our post-recording producer genius, Gabby Magnuson,

who cuts out all the extraneous noises, awkward silences, bodily functions and fixes the audio levels. Thank you and listen again next time.