North Korea News Podcast by NK News - New North Korean missile, Vietnamese visitors and more trash balloons

Episode Date: September 24, 2024

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un oversaw tests of a new ballistic missile and “highly upgraded” cruise missile last week, releasing images of the launches that appeared aimed at demonstrating that the weapons are combat-ready. NK News Senior Analytic Correspondent Colin Zwirko joins the podcast to discuss how the missiles augment the DPRK’s growing arsenal, […]

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And joining me after a week away, we have Colin's Wyricko. Colin, welcome back. Thank you, Jacko. All right, you've chosen some stories for us. Let's talk about Seoul has sent a warning to North Korea with regard to these trash balloons. Now, we've talked a lot about the trash balloons before that North Korea has sent in kind of irregular intervals to South Korea.

What's South Korea's warning to North Korea about the balloons? Well, so yeah, the balloons, the balloon saga continues. And so we're living over here in South Korea and every couple days it seems or every couple weeks We'll get another alert about trash balloons are coming in from from North Korea And South Korea is trying not to make a big deal out of this Yes, South Korea has to make some statements So in the latest statements a couple of days ago, the South Korean military is saying

they will take decisive military action if it gets worse. And for now, North Korea wants it to be just a nuisance. They just wanna send trash balloons and not provide a pretense for South Korea to respond. And South Korea is basically saying, if you give us that pretense, then we will respond. So we can expect it to just continue status quo now, which is hundreds of trash balloons coming in,

in this most recent one a couple of days ago on Monday. They once again led to the suspension of flights at Incheon International Airport. Right, and that's happened several times over the last few months Yeah, and so they halted flights for just an hour or two But that still causes a lot of disruptions and you don't and financial loss as well Yeah, I mean it sounds like over the months. It's it sounds you know you hear the word

Balloon coming over from North Korea with trash. It sounds like a light matter, literally lighter than air. But these things do cause damage, right? So what's the threat or what's the risk of these balloons? What are they doing? Yeah, and I know we've talked about this issue a lot on our page and then, you know, maybe in the podcast, but every single time they do it, it runs the risk of something going wrong that neither side wants. do it, it runs the risk of something going wrong that neither side wants. A balloon could land on a car or land in a street causing a car to swerve, someone could die. And then South Korea would be forced to respond and they don't really maybe want to cause a big conflict.

North Korea doesn't want that as well. For now, the South Korean military says the point to their response is to quote, show that the enemy has nothing to gain from it. So that means we want to just not respond in a big way and not give you what you want, which is some sort of limited conflict where they can come out on top. Yeah. And going back to the damage, I mean, this is not a hypothetical situation. In the story that Junha wrote, Fran Canews last week, there's mention of roof fires

being started by these trash balloons. Also, a car actually being damaged. $140,000 in property damage in this whole metropolitan area. And a cyclist who suffered minor injuries after being hit by a trash balloon. So that this is not yeah as you say we're only one car swerving into the on on the school for example pedestrians pedestrian crossing right from a serious accident yeah yeah it's pretty wild. I mean, another of the statements from the South Korean

military is kind of interesting from Monday. It says, quote, this is an internationally disgraceful and petty act aimed at creating discomfort and anxiety among our citizens and inciting internal conflict in our society. Now, I would say the same goes for the leaflets that South Korean activists send to North Korea The goal is to cause people to think differently about their their government But the difference is those are activists led and not government led and these from North Korea are government led So what I don't know where it goes from here, but it's it's very interesting. I think case study More people around the world should probably be paying attention to it just for how interesting it is because North Korea is also their response to South Korean propaganda loudspeakers is to reportedly

just play sounds of screaming and noises and things that are going to be creepy and eerie and Bother people across the border. These kinds of things are a nuisance operations and it's hard to respond as a military to them And there's also a quote in the story from an analyst from Qaeda who suggested that well, you know, it might just be trash now but what if North Korea starts to put more dangerous materials in say explosives or you know, chemical warfare or bacteriological warfare that this is a way to basically launch an aerial bombing campaign on a low

scale and kind of below the threshold of actual warfare, but a way that can easily be escalated to a certain point. I think those sorts of things North Korea would know. There's a bigger difference in response. And I think that's what South Korea is trying to say right now. They're trying to lay out the red lines and say those are things you cannot do without a response. But certainly I've heard analyses that say these are tests of the South Korean response. So maybe that would be a good plan in wartime or in a conflict time to utilize

what they've learned from how South Korea tracks and responds to these balloons if they're able to learn stuff like how South Korea tracks. South Korea says they responds to these balloons if they're able to learn stuff like how South Korea tracks. South Korea says they are tracking them from where they are in North Korea until they land. I guess the weakness with balloons though is that you're always reliant upon winds and going in the right direction at the right speed and air pressure and things. It's not like drones that you're targeting them, you're able to direct the flight with a balloon. It may go out over the sea, it may end up landing in your own property if you're not careful

Yeah, I don't know how big I don't know how effective of a tool of war there would be but certainly effective as a tool of nuisance All right, let's go to the next story there. I understand that North Korea recently Not only launched a new ballistic missile, but actually had it land in its own territory blowing up a piece of its own property Yeah, this is an interesting story. So last week North Korea fired another miss another short-range ballistic missile test. This one is the Hwasong 11C and they're calling it a 4.5 ton warhead, a super large warhead is what they're saying. That sounds like a pretty big explosive. I mean you need a, you know, you can't just drop that in an empty plot of land in

the city and not expect it to create some damage around you need a field to let that land in. Yeah, so I'm going to have a story out either today or tomorrow. I located the test range, the inland test range. I haven't seen anyone else locate this yet, but it's you mean where they're firing it from? No, where it actually lands where it landed and So the last time that they tested this missile back in July. Mm-hmm

It was interesting because they and they've never really done this before but they said in the in the state media report That we will test it We tested it at a short and an and a long range and we will test it again And a medium range sometime later in July. And then they just never did. And that kind of got overlooked. But South Korea military was saying that the short range one was actually a failure

and they're trying to pass it off as like a short range intentional, like launching it at different ranges. And South Korea was like like now that one probably failed but it seems to me like the test range up on the and I don't have it down right in front of me but it's right on the border of two counties up in North Hamgyong province. It's way inland in a mountainous area no population centers anywhere near this target range, but it seems like they used that target range back in July and again now.

And so we're trying to learn stuff about the accuracy. We know where they launched it from and we know where it landed. And they say that it was a 320 kilometer, about a 320 kilometer distance. It's a little bit off. It was actually 332 kilometers. So unfortunately we don't have a satellite image

from the day of or the day before the launch, so we can't see where they painted their targets. Or painted where they set out their little X and circle targets. Because you're actually, you know, with a missile, you're aiming at something, right? It's not just landing in a field. Yeah, they're aiming at these targets.

And if we could see the targets set out before the launch and then we can see that they were actually hit that would say a lot about their accuracy in terms of us believing what they say about their accuracy. Right because the reason we know about this launch, well one of the reasons is that North Korea actually publicized this in its outward-facing media the KCNA. Yeah they didn't post any photos back in July but they did post photos this time. I think that I can see the target set days before like even weeks before this So I think it does say a lot about their accuracy So watch out for that story, but I still have a little research to do on that

But I mean that's also interesting they didn't post they didn't publish it in KC TV the state TV or the Rodong Shinmun the state newspaper So it it's as far as we know, it was only intended for international audiences. And this story also had this, it was like a weird mix of stories. It was Kim Jong-un looks at us as a short range missile test where they're talking about the accuracy.

And then he goes and looks at some small rifles, sniper rifles and assault rifles and making a big deal about these these rifles in state media recently and overall I think and also I've seen other experts say this this looks like an advertisement for Russia so this is a larger rifles and the missile yeah okay so it's mainly a message for Russia hey we got good things to sell if you want them seems like that and I guess the argument is well why would an advertisement be in state media? Well it helps the legitimacy of the of the the claims. If you're making it big and public that's a little better

than just sending over some photos to Putin's Facebook or whatever. Telegraph or telegrams. Yeah okay good Let us now move on to our third story of the day. Now North Korea is repaving or restoring an airbase, sorry, a runway at an airbase, which had been dismantled to use as a COVID disinfection site during the pandemic. Yeah, so this story is a little niche, but I think it's interesting just to, it paints the story of North Korea's COVID saga. So back in 2021, they decide to take the to move out some old Soviet

era, 1950s era bombers, IL-28 bombers. Which were not using pieces. I mean, these are still used. They're still using them. Yeah, they're there, a lot of people refer to them as obsolete, but North Korea has a few squadrons of these IL-28 bombers. They're not obsolete if you're still, if someone's still using them. Yeah, not very effective against other, what they're facing off against, but you know, they can still drop bombs. But anyway, this airport, the Ui-Ju airport up at the border with China at the northwest corner next to Xineju that was turned into a big, they moved out all the planes, they demolished a bunch of stuff,

they built a rail line going into it and they started to put imports there, disinfect them, and then quarantine them outside on the 1.5 mile long runway for, you know, two, three months at a time because they were so scared of the virus coming into the country that they thought, you know. Right, through contact transmission. Yeah, a lot of people said, you know, two, three months at a time, cause they were so scared of the virus coming into the country that they thought, you know. Right, through contact transmission. Yeah, a lot of people said, you know, you don't need to worry that much about virus on objects. But anyway, so they did that for a couple of years,

but then recently they destroyed all of the disinfection, quarantine related infrastructure. And now we see in the last few days that they're starting to paint the stripes back on the runway. So the point of the story is that, well, there's a lot of change nationwide with North Korea's air bases, their air force. Kim Jong-un wants to upgrade the air force,

but there, you know, a lot of people refer to their air force in general as obsolete with their really old jets and they need, you know, that's another thing. Are they gonna get jets from Russia sometime soon? We don't know. I'm gonna put you on the spot here. What do we know about them making their own planes?

Do they do that? They have made their own copies in the past. And right now they're making drones. They have some factories in North Pyongan province and the Panghyon area where they have jet engine test cells. They supposedly they're making their big reconnaissance and combat drones there that they reviewed that they showed off last year. So I don't think that they would be producing any fighter jets, but they

could certainly get a couple or a certain amount from Russia. And some experts in the past, like last year, when the story, whenever Kim Jong-un went to that fighter jet factory up in Russia last year, the talk was that maybe they'll get a few to help the prestige of the Air Force, but that just having a couple, few, whatever,

is not gonna change the game, and they're highly expensive and I know they're giving Russia a lot of a lot of missiles. So yeah Even some jet fighters that are 20 25 years old would be still welcome I mean if they're flying around illusions from the the Korean War era then anything that's More modern than that would be a welcome addition to the North Korean Air Force, right? absolutely, and I modern than that would be a welcome addition to the North Korean Air Force, right? Absolutely. And I think having a few would be a prestige thing, but they could still do something in a war for a few minutes.

And we've seen that prestige a little bit when they have had recent parades that they'll do some fly-by aerial shows with some fighter jets. And they had that whole sort of top gun footage of the fighter jets in their in their uniforms and the helmets looking pretty cool. For sure and there's probably some internal politics there that I don't understand about the Air Force but he's Kim Jong-un focused his investments and well most of his attention on the ballistic missile forces throughout the first eight or 10 years of his rule. And then now he's finally starting to publicly put attention back on the Navy and the Air

Force. So we're seeing a lot of developments in those realms. Right. Okay. Well, and that was, this is a story that you've written for NK Pro based on your satellite analysis about the runway being rebuilt, repainted, reinstated after this dismantlement. So good story on that one. Now, we've got a couple of minutes left, very, very short to talk about Vietnamese military officials visiting North Korea. Does that

happen often? This kind of delegation has not happened at least since prior to the pandemic. Oh, okay. So we had a Vietnamese military delegation in North Korea. They met with the defense minister, Kang Soon Nam. They also visited a special operations forces army base. They're saying a lot of stuff like they want, quote, this is translated from Vietnamese via Google Translate, but they want high level delegations, training, cooperation, military, cultural,

and military sports exchanges, research, implementation of cooperation, blah, blah, blah. So they're talking about defense industry, cooperation, military, technology, these are all things that are sanctioned, not prohibited under UN sanctions, which both North Korea and Vietnam are party to right and so what I what I want to look for with this is

What is the response from other countries who are partners of Vietnam the US? I haven't seen a response from the US yet. This was a story last week I'm wondering if I don't know what what we'll do on this story this week But I think we need to know what the US Yes, we need to talk about that because the US has been particularly close to Vietnam in the last few years In terms of military dialogue and I don't know what I have a vague memory Weren't there even some joint drills or some some things that have done some military things together, right? kind of as a way of

things that have done some military things together, right? Kind of as a way of warning off China against making claims on Vietnamese territory. And so now to see Vietnamese military officials and defense minister or vice minister visiting Pyongyang, this is very unusual. There aren't many countries that do that, that talk to US military officials and North Korean military officials. Yeah, I think there are a certain amount of these countries and and you know they want to balance they you know the US cannot unless it depends on what kind of leverage the US wants to try to put on them and I think the US did a lot of that back in the 2016 2017 sanction the height of UN sanctions they were able to threaten countries with this or that and say if you don't support the sanctions you know blah blah blah and I don't know I'm not a Vietnam expert so I

don't know what the US would want to even push on that and we don't know where this is going exactly probably not the level of the Russia North Korea relations military exchanges the Vietnamese, okay I don't even want to try to pronounce his name, but they they invited the North Korean defense minister to go to the defense exhibition 2024 in Vietnam in December. And he'll look around at weapons I guess. I don't know, this kind of thing has happened in Russia, this kind of thing has happened in Syria in years past. I guess. I don't know, this kind of thing has happened in Russia. This kind of thing has happened in Syria in years past. I guess we'll see. Very interesting. And of course, worth reminding our listeners that back in 2019, it was

Hanoi that was the site of the second Trump-Kim summit, partly because Vietnam has friendly relations with both countries. Yeah, great point. And it has embassies in both Pyongyang and in Seoul. So this is definitely a story to keep an eye on. Thanks, Colin, for coming on the show and telling us about this. Thanks, Jackal. See you again.

See you again. See you again. See you again. See you again. See you again. See you again. See you again. See you again.

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