North Korea News Podcast by NK News - North Korea’s latest weapons expo, naval ambitions and Pyongyang hospital opens

Episode Date: October 7, 2025

NK News’ Senior Analytic Correspondent Colin Zwirko unpacks the key developments ahead of North Korea’s Oct. 10 military parade marking the 80th anniversary of the Workers’ Party of Korea. He begins by discussing Pyongyang’s latest weapons exhibition, where state media previewed an unmanned surface vehicle — a type of naval drone — and explains that […]

Navigating the dynamics of the Korean Peninsula requires more than just information. It demands insight. Career Risk Group offers strategic consulting that cuts through the noise. Our experts provide in-depth analysis, risk assessments and bespoke reports, all tailored to your specific needs. Whether you're exploring new opportunities or managing existing challenges, our insights can be your compass. To learn more about how we can help you make informed strategic decisions, visit careerrisk.com slash solutions today. Hello, listeners, and welcome to the NK News podcast.

I'm your host, Jacko, Zwitz with him. Today, it is Tuesday, the 7th of October 2025, and I'm joined via stream yard by Colin Zwerko. Colin, welcome back on the show. Hello, Jacko. How's gone? Going just fine, thank you. We've got a couple of days to go, just three days to go, really, before the October, the 10th military parade to have.

in Pyongyang. Remind us, what is October the 10th in North Korea? What does it stand for? What does it mean? October 10th is the official founding anniversary of the ruling Workers Party of Korea. So this is going to be the 80th anniversary this year. Okay. And that's obviously a big number, 80s, so they're pulling out all the stops and North Korea has unveiled some kind of drone and has talked about South Korea being a military target. Yes, they have kicked off the weapons celebration that they're planning. So they're going to do a military parade to celebrate October 10th. It's either going to take place on, it could take place a day before the holiday on Thursday evening

with state media coming out on Friday or basically one day later. So it could take place on Friday with state media coverage coming out on Saturday. And they kicked off the events with the Weapons Expo. actually, which is kind of like a spoiler for the anticipation from the parade. And one thing that we noticed in the background was a small, what's called an unmanned surface vehicle, which is basically a naval drone. And this looks like it's being displayed at the parade, even though state media has not highlighted it very much. So my suspicion is that it's going to be featured on truck trailers coming out during the parade,

along with a bunch of other new weapons. I know neither of us are a military hardware expert, but what's the added value of having an unmanned surface vehicle? Well, this is something that I guess they can use to try to infiltrate South Korean ports, naval ports, or industrial facilities. In wartime, that would mean being able to get off attacks more easily without being detected,

which they couldn't do with, with a larger crude vessel, maybe. So South Korea is going to have to respond to this and let the people know that they have the ability to detect and defend against smaller remote drones. But there's still a lot of unanswered questions. I mean, basically, we only saw this in one photo. We still, people still have to be convinced of North Korea's capabilities.

North Korea has to be able, same, same question with their aerial drones. They have to be able to have reliable communications with these drones in order to pilot them from far away. And that means satellite communications, which currently they don't have the capabilities by themselves. So they would have to be using perhaps Russian satellites. Borrow or rent bandwidth on somebody else's satellites. Or some other form of communication, which is potentially susceptible to tempering by South Korea. So there's still a lot of under-answered questions on that front, but I think what we've learned over the past decade with North Greece's military parades and the teases that they do with their weapons is that they usually follow through with their intentions on building something, even if it comes out at a parade and starts looking like a concept model or something that's not fully developed yet. It is an announcement of their direction of their development.

So in a way, it's a bit like the motor vehicle shows where they would show a prototype model that isn't actually ready to be sold on the market yet, but this is what, you know, this contains elements of what future vehicles may look like. Yeah, I guess it's a good point. I guess they don't, they don't exactly call it a concept usually, but we can infer that that's kind of what it is. Right. Now, at the same time as showing the photograph of this unmanned surface vehicle, Kim and Jong-un said that suggested that South Korea could be a potential target. for attacks due to the US rock nuclear alliance. Yeah, I mean, this is very consistent. North Korea has always threatened South Korea. I think that Kim overall taken together, Kim's speeches in the last couple of years,

his main point is that he'll never stop developing nuclear weapons until no one in the world is developing nuclear weapons, I guess. So this point to be taken is going to continue. He always wants to threaten that there's a possible possible chance of even a first strike against South Korea, like what he's called his second mission of his nuclear forces. He wants to deter any kind of action from South Korea, especially after learning what the former South Korean president was willing to do in terms of trying to provoke a conflict. That was Yun-Soguel. And so these kinds of threats serve to as a

deterrence. He wants them to serve as a deterrence against South Korean military action. against North Korea, but I don't think that there's any reason we should take these statements to mean that North Korea is preparing some kind of proactive attack to invade and take over the South. I think it's clear that he wants to keep his kingdom intact and developing in his own way without interference, and so he has to deter against anyone who wants to disrupt that. And this all happened against the backdrop of a, it's a North Korea's annual defense exhibition, and I would encourage our listeners to go to an article by our colleague Juhon Kim called North Korea unveils first unmanned surface drone ahead of October the 10th raid, partly because, I mean,

we've talked about some of the headliner items there, but what I really find interesting is the photograph in that story that shows Kim Jong-un seated on a sort of a lounge room-type arrangement of couches and armchairs talking to military officials in full uniform surrounded by rocket launches and things. And it looks like the set of a Western-style television chat show. Like he's just kind of sitting around having a bit of a chat about weapons. Yeah, I mean, so he's sitting around with his top weapons development guys. Actually, it was interesting because the guy seated closest to him on the couch. He wasn't on the stage during Kim's speech that he delivered outside of the venue prior to entering on stage where his top political and military development officials. But

next to him on the couch was Ri Chang-ho, one of the top commanders leading forces in Ukraine, or in Russia against Ukraine. That's interesting. Yeah, it means that he's there to look at the arsenal, what new developments there are, potentially maybe just as his role under the reconnaissance general bureau, or he might be the general staff. I'm sorry, but forgetting his exact title at the moment. But anyway, it might just be his role generally as a military commander, or it might be because North Korea wants to use some of these weapons in Russia or sell them to Russia.

So I found that pretty interesting. But yeah, the setting you mean, they've done these defense expos, I think, since 2021, occasionally, mostly at the three revolutions complex in northeast Pyongyang. And they're squeezing all these giant nuclear missiles into this exhibition room. The thing that I find that frustrating is they still do a lot of blurring and obfuscation. If you're in that room, it's like you're going to learn so much about North Korea's weapons development direction, but they're still blurring the names of most weapons. I'm hoping they printed the name of a missile on a new short-range missile with the hypersonic glide vehicle.

They printed the name of the missile for the first time on the missile, just like China does. if you watched their recent military parade, they just print the names of all the weapons on the weapons so you can clearly know what they're called. So maybe North Korea will do that at the coming up parade. Yeah, and it's a big parade. As you said, it's 80th anniversary. We've got the leaders of Laos and a top leader of Vietnam are going there. So it'll be interesting to see who's all up on the stage watching the events. Let's move on now to, well, it's still a related topic there, defense related. North Korea's got some naval news. You did a story recently about a corvette that sailed into dry dock? What's happening there?

Yeah, to set up the thing about the warships is also Kim Jong-un did visit one of the new destroyers that they built. He visited that a couple days ago, and it was billed as being part of the weapons exhibition. So we might see more reports in state media this week of Kim and officials going around to various checkout weapons that couldn't be squeezed into the expo room, maybe. maybe we'll see a submarine. I don't know. But so he he took all like hundreds of officials to go look at the new destroyer. So North Creek built two destroyers in the last year and a half. They've launched them officially. Both of them are set to deploy next year on the East Coast. Colin just helped me in my memory and that of the list is there. What was the launch that failed? There was one where the

ship kind of ended up almost capsizing. What was that? Was that a destroyer? Yeah. So it was one of these destroyers. These are the largest warships that North Korea has built. They have larger ones that are much, much older. But one of them was built on the West Coast, and it's going to sail to the East Coast, according to North Green State Media, sometime before early next year. Oh, around South Korea. Yeah, again, something to watch for. It's going to be a very interesting time when that happens. But the other one was built on the East Coast in Chongjin, and that one failed the side launch where they slide it off sideways off the dock or off the pier and that halfway capsized and they fixed it up and launched it in June.

But both of these ships are still undergoing a lot of changes, installations. Like launching the ship just means that they've finished the basic kind of structure and that they're going to then work on it and train the crew before deploying. So deployment is going to happen next year. So anyway, these two ships, I think Kim bringing like hundreds of officials to go look around the ship is part of him trying to ensure more trust and belief in people that these are real projects with real capabilities. So if anyone around the country can watch this and they're maybe talking to their local party officials who's come back into town and has told everyone about their experience, there's going to be a lot more belief. that these are real and different. But these are, they look much better than North Korea's naval developments in the past.

Some questions still are what's going to go on, what's going to happen with their submarines? And these corvettes are smaller ships that they developed four of over the last like 15 years. And they had really, really long and troubled development process. None of them were officially launched. Only one of them featured in like an actual operation. and state media. And these are still undergoing development. So I wrote a story that tracks where they've been, what they're doing. Only one of them is really looking like it's operating normally out in the sea near the East Coast inter-Korean border. But it's, you know, I think what we need to

watch for in the next year is North Korea, like Kim Jong-un is claiming he wants a blue water, Navy. He says he wants to sail his ships across the oceans and have them go outside of U.S. ports. And something like, show them what it feels like to have foreign ships near you. And so he's been very threatening in that regard, like very detailed in what he's saying he's going to do. And one of the photos of him on the ship this week was a world map. They blurred it, but it looks like it's a world map with maybe US naval bases all around the world. So we'll see. Oh, that'll be interesting. Gosh. Okay. So North Korea with its aspirations to have a blue water name a blue ocean navy uh let's see how that goes now for our our last story today you've uh you've

written a story that north uh kim jong un has been present at the opening of the big new hospital in peongyang that we've been talking about for goodness me it feels like about five years now that's right five years uh the peongyang general hospital officially opened yesterday uh on october sixth. So it was in state media this morning. This hospital is located in what was a large open park in front of the monument to the workers' party along the Teidong River. So that's the one with the large hands holding the, what is it, paintbrush, sickle, and hammer. Oh, the monument to the yeah, the party founding. The hammer, the stickle and the paintbrush, the writing brush. Right. So he, So they built it starting in 2020. They built most of the actual structure in 2020. And then he said in March 2020 that it needed to open by October 2020, which didn't happen. State media started to ignore it. It wasn't really showing up much in state media. Basically abandoned the project in some sense because Kim didn't really talk about it anymore. Started to talk about it again in early 2024, said it should open in 2024. It didn't. So last month he went.

to the hospital said that it was delayed due to corruption from local officials trying to make schemes during the construction basically admitting that he lost control wasn't really keeping tabs on the project and admitted that and he opened it today and in his speech today was really interesting he said that the public the ministry of public health is totally worthless he said that they have no idea what they're doing that you cannot trust them to do anything going forward in the future So he's implying that he's going to disband them and replace them. And it's all about him just blaming everyone else, making himself look like he is on top of things.

And that he's promising to build another general hospital in Pyongyang. He's promising to build over 200 hospitals around the country in the next 10 years. And he wants people to believe that there's going to be a, quote, revolution and a reform in the health sector. So he says, you know, this is a whole country for, the people, right? But we can't even provide health care for the people. He's admitting this. So I think he wants people to believe that, oh, he's for real. We can trust him because he's admitting things we all see with their own eyes. And this time it's going to be different. So it remains to be seen, but he's promised a lot in terms of health sector. He's called it a gift for the people,

but it's implying that it will be free health care for anyone at all who enters those doors. But the truth is yet unknown. Well, and I would encourage our listeners to go online and have a look at the story that you've just published fresh this morning called Kim Jong-un demands major health sector reform at Pyongyang Hospital opening because the photos there from the North Korean state media from the Rolong Shimon, it's clear it's a very inside. It's a very gleaming building. I mean, if you were standing here inside this Pyongyang General Hospital, you might as well be in, I don't know, Yonsei Severance Hospital. It's got that kind of a look to it from the outside. the photographs, it's got two towers that are both well over 10 stories tall connected by a skybridge. It's quite impressive, wouldn't you say, Colin? Just the structure of it. I mean, I don't know what the, how well equipped it is on the inside. Yeah, it's, you know, we know that it was built using mostly like how they build everything in North Korea, which is they make concrete bricks by hand on site, and then they pile them up and mortar them over and make gigantic buildings using that. But they did use some

steel, which they don't usually really use for most buildings. They did use some steel for the bridge that connects the towers. I would say basically this is not up to international construction standards, but it's, you know, buildings aren't collapsing or anything in North Korea and there's a lot of buildings made out of concrete in South Korea as well. So the interior quality looks great. They know how to cover up the concrete bricks. And they've imported all of their medical equipment from abroad. Right.

I have big questions. I'm planning to write something about the hospital bed factory that's basically run by one of the top weapons manufacturing groups in the country. They claim to have this hospital bed factory that Kim Jong-in is very attentive to. He visited it just last year again. But they have no domestic hospital beds in this new hospital that they've had five years to build. So there are some real questions. Kim did criticize the hospital, I mean, the medical manufacturing industry capacity in his speech yesterday.

So it's either that they have no capacity and all of his factories that he's paid a lot of attention to over the years are still lying to him and still failing to do anything or still failing to receive any support or ability to run like a company would in another country under a different economy. But yeah, it was imported everything from China, some European equipment like x-ray machines from Siemens, stuff like that. But yeah, it would be a good place to go, I'm sure. He says that the staff still has a lot to learn to get up to international standards in terms of a general hospital, but promising a lot in terms of actually living up to a Yonsei severance standards in the coming years. Okay, well, that's where we'll leave it for today. Thank you very much, Collins Worker, for walking, through these stories and can't wait to see the parade.

Yeah, so watch out for that either Friday morning, Korea and time. So that would be like Thursday night, US time, or Saturday morning, Korea time, Friday night, US time for coverage of the parade. That's right. We'll be having live coverage, a live event if you're a subscriber. So watch out for your email box for details. Thank you, Colin. See you again soon.

Thank you, Jacko. 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 also. 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.careapro.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 Scabby Magnuson who cuts out all the extraneous noises, awkward silences, bodily functions, and fixes the audio levels.

Thank you and listen again next time.