Joseph Bermudez, military analyst for Jane’s Intelligence Review and author of The Armed Forces of North Korea, has published the eighth issue of his very fascinating KPA Journal.
Click here to download the full issue (PDF).
Topics include: KPA Engineer River Crossing Forces, Inside a DPRK “Mother Ship”, Correction: BTR-60.
You can find all of the previous issues of KPA Journal here.
Joseph Bermudez, military analyst for Jane’s Intelligence Review and author of The Armed Forces of North Korea, has published the seventh issue of his very fascinating KPA Journal.
Click here to download the full issue (PDF).
Topics include: The KPA Mechanized Infantry Batallion, BTR-60 in KPA Service, Han-Gang Briges, P’okpoong Main Battle Tank
You can find all of the previous issues of KPA Journal here.
The image above comes from the Boston Globe and demonstrates the DPRK’s “stealth” tactics described below.
According to the Choson Ilbo:
The North Korean military has developed various kinds of camouflage materials like stealth paint and set up fake facilities and equipment to cheat state-of-the-art reconnaissance satellites and aircraft, a confidential field manual obtained exclusively by the Chosun Ilbo shows.
The manual was smuggled out of the North by a source through a Christian organization called Caleb Mission.
So far information about the North Korean military’s camouflage tactics trickled out only piecemeal through testimonies of North Korean defectors, but this is the first time a confidential military field manual with details has been revealed.
The manual, printed in 2005, quotes leader Kim Jong-il as saying, “As I’ve said several times, modern warfare is stealth warfare. We can say that victory or defeat will be determined by how we carry out stealth warfare.”
The 80-odd-page booklet gives detailed instructions on how to make and apply stealth paint that absorbs radar waves and build various kinds of fake facilities, such as command posts, foxholes, runways, fighter jet and naval bases, and cave strongholds.
The manual also describes how to conceal real facilities or equipment and to make military units look as though they are moving when they are not to deceive South Korean and U.S. reconnaissance.
A South Korean intelligence expert who reviewed the manual said, “I was surprised to find that the North Korean military has done more intensive and careful research into stealth tactics than we thought. This is a useful piece of information that will be of great help to our military stepping up preparedness against the North.”
And according to the AFP:
North Korea has developed camouflage materials such as stealth paint to hide its warships, tanks or fighter jets from foreign reconnaissance satellites and aircraft, reports said Monday.
A confidential field manual used by the communist North’s military showed the isolated regime has also built a network of foxholes and caves, the Chosun Ilbo newspaper reported.
The newspaper said the manual quoted North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il as saying: “Modern warfare is stealth warfare. We can say that victory or defeat will be determined by how we carry out stealth warfare.”
The handbook, printed in 2005, was smuggled out of the North by a source through Caleb Mission, a South Korean Christian organisation.
It gives detailed instructions on how to make and apply the stealth paint, which absorbs radar waves, Chosun Ilbo said.
The South’s defence ministry confirmed the North’s military had used the manual for years.
“We have already acquired a copy of the manual and are fully aware of the North’s tactics,” a ministry spokesman told AFP, declining to give details.
The manual describes how to conceal facilities or equipment and how to make military units look as though they are moving when they are not, to deceive South Korean and US reconnaissance.
Chosun Ilbo quoted an unnamed intelligence expert as saying he was surprised to find that the North’s military has done “more intensive and careful research into stealth tactics than we thought”.
Yonhap news agency carried a similar report.
The handbook describes concealing long-range artillery equipment by applying radar-reflective materials, it said.
The North’s military was also ordered to pave fake aircraft runways to deceive foreign prying eyes, Yonhap said.
Read the full stories here:
N.Korea’s Stealth Warfare Manual Revealed
Choson Ilbo
8/23/2010
N.Korea develops camouflage tactics
AFP
8/23
According to Strategy Page:
North Korean TV recently showed video of a new tank, called the Storm Tiger. South Korean officials call it the M2002, after the year they first became aware of it. The new North Korean tank appears to be based on the Russian T-62, an unsuccessful design that North Korea produced under license. The M2002/Storm Tiger was apparently developed in the 1990s, based on 1980s technology. It appears to be a 40 ton vehicle, a little longer than the T-62 and may have some modern electronics (beyond a laser range finder.) The North Koreans describe the vehicle as “modern”, but even if they have modern fire control (which China or Russia won’t give away and which North Korea cannot really afford to buy), they are several decades behind Western (and South Korean) tank technology. North Korea has about 4,000 tanks, most of them based on 1950s and 60s technology. About half of them are Russian T-62s (or North Korea variants of that design). Against modern tanks, the North Korea vehicles perform more as targets than adversaries.
North Korea imported 500 T-62s in the 1970s. Then, in the 1980s, North Korea produced 1,200 lighter and modified versions of the T-62 (as the Chonmaho). There were five different models, with later ones having the ERA (Explosive Reactive Armor) and laser range finder.
Most Chonmaho tanks have since died of old age and lack of spare parts, with about 500 still available for service. This vehicle weighed 40 tons, had a four man crew, a 115mm gun (plus a 14.5mm and 7.62mm machine-guns) and added ERA. Top speed was 50 kilometers an hour and range on fuel carried was 450 kilometers. The original T-62 was an improved T-55, weighed 41.5 tons, entered service in 1961. Over 22,000 were eventually built, when production ended in 1975. There have been many improvements since. It is a simple tank, and over a thousand remain in service around the world. Russian T-62s most recently saw combat two years ago in Georgia. The T-62 can trace its design back to World War II. That’s because the T-54, which the T-62 evolved from (via the T-55), was developed in 1944. The basis for the T-54 was the T-44, an advanced model of the legendary T-34. The T-62, however, was the end of the line, in more ways than one.
Story 2: The Inauspicious Life of Pilots
Daily NK
Yoo Gwan Hee
8/20/2010
…In North Korea, pilots receive top class treatment alongside submariners and the missile corps. They live above the law in many ways. For instance, if a pilot murders someone in society and then returns to their unit, M.P.s cannot arrest them.
While the top choice of middle school graduates is to work in the No.5 Department of the Central Committee of the Party, that which oversees every aspect of Kim Jong Il’s life, pilot is a popular second choice. The primary condition for selection is family background.
Until the 1980s, offspring of normal workers could be selected if they had a good academic record and enough physical strength. However, any person whose family had committed a political crime was excluded. Also, if a family member had sided with South Korea or went missing during the Korean War, they would be excluded, too.
Until this period, the occupation of pilot was deemed to be a dangerous job and children of the elite did not consider it as a career. However, as the economic crisis began in the 1990s, this view changed. Many of the children of elite officials now choose to become pilots.
Currently, pilots still receive ‘special treatment’ in North Korea; however, it is not particularly special any more. Compared to Party officials, who make money in business, the feeling of deprivation which pilots feel has increased a lot.
Pilots are still bound to the state for their living, while the elite increase their wealth and authority through foreign currency earning and market business.
Until the early 1990s, “No. 4 supplies,” which are given to pilots, were free and extras were sold to their families if necessary. Also, since North Korea was worried about the pilots’ mental states, they took care of family issues and distributed supplies to their families once a month.
Even during “The March of Tribulation” in the mid-1990s, normal food distribution was given to families of pilots. However, as the atmosphere in society changed, their stress is increasing. Children of pilots are becoming a target in schools; teachers demand much of pilots’ children first.
Air Force Units receive a relatively good coal supply, however, since the absolute quantity is still lacking, they need to prepare firewood on their own, too. Until the early 1990s, if one or two packs of cigarette, soybean oil, and beer were given to workers on a farm in the surrounding area or a forest ranger, firewood might come in return. However, the times have changed.
Wives of pilots also have to enter the battle. Wives sell distributed supplies to wholesalers or sell them directly in farming villages in the surrounding area.
However, even in the situation where a lot of workers receive not even a single grain of rice from the nation, the supply for pilots is still special. However, since pilots do not have the authority to use it for business and bribery like other officials; their practical standard of living is not very different from a person who sells home appliances in the market.
The biggest stress which North Korean pilots feel is their concern for their old age. Currently in North Korean society, the treatment you receive in active duty and that of the retired are very different.
Until the 1990s, North Korea praised pilots as a “treasure of the nation” and promised them lifelong care. But after 2000, the retired were completely abandoned. The national pension is worth less than a price of one kilogram of corn.
Usually in other countries, the rising generation has more discontent toward the government compared to the mature group, but in North Korea it is the opposite and this is the reason for the phenomenon. When retired, they need to farm or do business in the market, but retirees are short of market experience and strength. Current pilots, observing the lives of their former comrades, cannot feel comfortable about it.
Now we are in an era where even a pilot receiving “top” level treatment from North Korea attempts an escape, and this is not surprising anymore.
Story 1: Pilot Privileges Fade into History
Daily NK
Yoo Gwan Hee
8/11/2009
…[S]pecial employees, such as air force pilots or submarine captains, belong to a class which is treated as the most exceptional in North Korea (notwithstanding officials or members of elite organizations). Before the start of the 21st century, pilots enjoyed considerable privileges. The North Korean state paid special attention to cultivating pilots, showering them with preferential treatment. Goods provided to pilots and their family members were entirely free and a separate compensation-based ration system applied to the whole group.
So, in the North, the closest thing to a “summer vacation” as enjoyed by the people of the free world would inevitably be the “recreation” of pilots. In North Korea, pilots and their family members were permitted vacation once a year and once every two years, respectively. Submarine captains were entitled to similar terms.
Some of the recreation centers used by pilots and their families include the “Galma Recreation Center” in Wonsan, the “Sokhu Recreation Center” in South Hamkyung Province, and the “Jooeul Recreation Center,” among others. All are located near the ocean, and are unparalleled in terms of scenery. In the case of the Galma Recreation Center, there are two buildings housing bedrooms for the visitors standing side-by-side in a shady area, while a separate dining hall and indoor gymnasium can also be found.
Usually, three to four singles and four to five married households from one unit (regiment level) could use the recreation center at any one time.
Single and family rooms are separate. In the former, there are four single beds and in the latter, two double beds. According to regulations, only two children per family are permitted; those who need to bring three or four children have to work out an arrangement with the management office.
In the centers, there is no designated work, but meals and sleeping times must be strictly kept. Breakfast begins at 7:30 A.M., lunch at 12:30 P.M. and dinner at 6 P.M.; naps can only be taken between 2 and 4 P.M. Bedtime is fixed at 10 P.M. Guests have to strictly adhere to these times.
Besides these restrictions, the visitors have the freedom to spend time as they want. Some people play Chinese chess (janggi) and others cards while the rest may choose to head for the beach.
The menus for the week are displayed next to the windows from which the food is served. Soup and bowls of rice are distributed per person and up to four side dishes are distributed to each table (a table consists of two groups).
Until the early 1990s, the most popular food among those served at the recreation centers was bread made in the former Soviet Union. Every morning, a Russian bread called “Khleb,” on which butter or powdered sugar could be put, was provided. The fruit which was given to each person at lunchtime was also popular with the visitors.
The period of recreation enjoyed by pilots was usually 20 days. However, some families, rather than using up all of their days, left the recreation centers in a hurry to visit parents or relatives in their hometowns. Usually, an additional 15 days of vacation was added unto the 20 recreation days, during which many people take trips to their hometowns.
Some diligent wives would continue to work even while in the centers. Surrounding the Galma Recreation Center, located on the shore of the East Sea, or the Sokhu Recreation Center are heaps of seaweed which are washed ashore with the tides. The wives, after washing the seaweed in the ocean water, dried it on the seashore.
Two or three 50-kg bags are barely sufficient for that much dried seaweed. Wives sent these to their in-laws or families with satisfaction.
However, such extravagant levels of recreation for pilots began to disappear in the mid-1990s with the March of Tribulation. Now, even when the state issues recreation permits, people tend to take off for hometowns, not to recreation centers.
Further, with the decline in the national esteem of pilots in recent years and due to the fact that the items which are provided as rations tend to be sold in the markets for additional income, the luxurious lives of the special class are becoming less impressive all the time. Recently, some pilots have even been selling their cigarette rations (one month’s worth) in the jangmadang.
Corruption also afflicts pilots to no small extent. Schools request additional money and products from the children of pilots, due to the popular image of affluence they command.
The sense of deprivation among pilots and family members, who are supposedly among the most revered people in North Korea, has been growing. Their status has indeed decreased over the years; one cannot ignore the fact that the standard of living of private merchants or foreign currency earners has now outpaced that of pilots, who are dangerously dependent on rations for their survival.
UPDATE 2 (8/19/2010): China and the DPRK assert mechanical problems as the cause fo the crash. According to the AFP:
Investigators have found that the plane crash in Liaoning province’s Fushun county was caused by a mechanical failure, the official Xinhua news agency reported, citing unidentified government sources.
The pilot lost course due to the unspecified mechanical failure and strayed into Chinese territory, Xinhua said.
“The aircraft crashed into a civilian makeshift house, leaving no Chinese dead or injured. The pilot died on the spot,” the brief report said.
China and North Korea have “reached consensus on coping with the aftermath” of the accident, for which Pyongyang has “expressed regret”, Xinhua said.
…
It said Thursday that Chinese officials, watched by about 100 armed police, dismantled the plane and transported it to an unidentified location.
It quoted witnesses as saying the plane crashed after circling a couple of times above their village in an apparent attempt to crash land.
“I’ve never seen any plane flying so low in my life. I thought the plane was on a training mission but suddenly it fell to the ground,” one witness told Yonhap.
North Korea, which has been silent over the reported crash of its aircraft Tuesday, on Thursday boasted of its “invincible” air power.
The North’s air force has grown to be an “invincible revolutionary armed force” since it was founded in 1947, the official Korean Central News Agency said.
North Korean pilots “fully demonstrated their combat capability” during the 1950-53 Korean War, it said.
UPDATE 1 (8/18/2010): some pictures here and here.
ORIGINAL POST (8/18/2010): According to Yonhap:
A North Korean airplane that appeared to be a Soviet-era jet fighter crashed in a Chinese border area, killing the pilot aboard who may have been attempting to defect to Russia, intelligence sources in Shenyang said Wednesday.
The crash took place in Fushun Prefecture in the province of Liaoning Tuesday afternoon, the sources said, adding the pilot was the only person aboard the plane when it crashed.
“The pilot died on the spot,” one source said, adding the Chinese authorities were able to identify the nationality of the airplane only after the crash.
Chinese authorities had confirmed that a small aircraft flew into their territory but did not identify its origin. Photos of the wreckage purportedly taken by a Chinese resident and uploaded on the Internet showed the North Korean flag on the tail of the plane.
Another source said that the plane is believed to have lost its direction while flying to Russia after escaping North Korea. China has a repatriation pact with North Korea, which may have led the pilot to choose Russia as his destination.
Some experts said the plane appeared to be a MiG-15, a model widely deployed during the 1950-53 Korean War but now used mostly for training. South Korea’s military said it was more likely a MiG-21, citing a radar detection of the North Korean aircraft leaving an air base near the border with China.
“Radar images show the North Korean aircraft took off from the air base in Sinuiju,” an official in Seoul said, based on images captured by the Air Force’s Monitor Control and Reporting Center (MCRC) that monitors activities of North Korean aircraft.
“According to the images, it appears to be a MiG-21,” the official said on the condition of anonymity.
Fushun is about 200 kilometers away from the Sinuiju air base. The number of North Korean soldiers defecting from their impoverished homeland has increased in recent months as food shortages deepen, observers say.
According to the New York Times:
Although thousands of North Koreans have fled their repressive home country in the past decade and a half, it is highly unusual for an elite pilot to defect. A North Korean pilot flew his MiG-19 to defect to South Korea in 1983. Another North Korean pilot did the same in 1996.
…
Cao Yunjuan, a 54-year-old farmer in Fushun County, where the crash occurred, said she saw the plane going down but that she heard no explosion.
“Around 3 p.m. yesterday, I saw a small plane going down and soon it disappeared from my view,” she said in a telephone interview on Wednesday. “There was no blast, though.”
Ms. Cao said that she lived less than a mile from the crash site and that she and other villagers went to see the wreckage before the area was cordoned off by the police. Many saw a North Korean emblem on the plane’s tail. Photographs of what appear to be the crash site show a North Korean star on the wreckage.
Xinhua said China was in communication with North Korea about the crash.
North Korea’s first air division’s 24th regiment is headquartered in Uiju, just north of the border city of Sinuiju, and pilots frequently train near the Yalu River which forms the border with China.
World War II: Konan / Hungnam POW camp.
This camp was located in present-day Hungnam (South Hamgyong Province). Run by the Japanese, it housed approximately 350 British and Australian prisoners who were captured during the fall of Singapore. According to one web page, an American B-29 crew was interned there for 16 days. The camp opened on September 14, 1943. The soldiers were repatriated (released) in mid-September 1945, approximately a month after Japan surrendered.
The above photo of the camp and other great shots can be found on this flickr page. Below is a picture of the camp location as it exists today (39°51’10.83″N, 127°35’29.08″E).
Just to the west of the camp was the Motomiya Chemical Plant where POWs worked to produce carbide. This factory was destroyed in the Korean War and is now the Hungnam Thermal Power Plant and/or the 2.8 Vinalon Complex:
Korean War:
Pyoktong Camp 5
There is not much information on this camp on the internet, but according to this site:
This lovely close-up is of a POW camp at Pyok Tong North Korea. The not so lovely part is that over 2000 UN prisoners are buried behind the camp.
Many UK prisoners from the Imjim battles ended up in that camp. Most of the Glosters were marched for 6 weeks to that place, then the officers and NCOs were separated from the men in case they influenced them.
A separate web page does not describe it so well:
According to a former POW, Dr. Sid Essensten, American POWs were dying at the rate more than a dozen per day in January and February of 1951 due to exposure, malnutrition, and dysentery. At that time, the camp was run by the North Koreans. Conditions improved slightly when the Chinese forces assumed control of the camp and milder weather arrived in April of 1951. Conditions improved significantly in July of 1951 once peace talks began with the UN.
Several authors have written about Camp Five, which was one of the most notorious POW camps in North Korea. Albert Biderman’s March to Calumny and Raymond Lech’s Broken Soldiers are two of the best documented accounts of Camp Five. Clay Blair’s The Forgotten War discusses the 24th Infantry Division in detail, to include the Battle at Anju.
Here are some alleged pictures taken in the camp.
According to the Korean War Project, the Kangdong Camp 8 is located at 39° 7’10.38″N, 126° 6’5.26″E and Pak’s Place was located at 39° 7’10.01″N, 125°53’46.43″E. I cannot find much information on either of these camps—but I am not a historian.
If you are aware of the locations of other POW camps in North Korea from either WWII or the Korean War, please let me know.
According to the Daily NK:
Despite the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1874 in June, 2009, North Korea’s weapons exports last year earned the country approximately the same amount as they have since Resolution 1718 was passed in 2006.
Song Young Sun, a lawmaker sitting on the National Defense Committee of the National Assembly, told reporters on Wednesday, “South Korea’s intelligence organizations have obtained a figure of around $50 million, and they assume that in practice the North has exported much more than that.”
Intelligence authorities apparently believe that the reason is that North Korea has exported parts and supported foreign munitions factories in other ways, rather than exporting finished weapons.
In September of last year, a Georgian cargo plane containing 35 tons of weapons parts including those for the Taepo-dong 2 was intercepted in Bangkok. Two months later, a ship heading for Congo was also revealed by South Africa to contain parts of the T-54 and T-55, North Korean tanks based on Soviet designs.
Meanwhile, the most successful period for the sanctions regime was immediately after UN Resolution 1718 was imposed on North Korea in 2006, when North Korean exports are estimated to have been reduced to $30 million, just 1/7th of the previous year’s total.
Read the full story here:
North Korea’s Arms Exports Stay Steady
Daily NK
Kim Min Su
8/5/2010
According to the Choson Ilbo:
Seoul-based news channel YTN reported on Wednesday that a 34 m-long vessel equipped with 30- and 57-mm cannons was caught in a satellite photograph off the North’s Daedong River, near Nampo in South Pyongan Province.
An improved version of a hovercraft built to assist Pyongyang’s special forces in carrying out a possible invasion of South Korea, the ship is twice the length of the North’s earlier military hovercrafts.
In addition to some 130 wartime hovercrafts of about 17 to 20 m in length which the North Korean military has anchored off both the east and west coasts, a whopping 37 m-long air-cushion vehicle was also seen docked at Wonsan port in the East Sea.
Supported by a cushion of air, hovercrafts can move over land, ice and water, as well as mudflats and swamps.
Read the full story here:
N.Korea’s New Hovercraft Battleship Seen for First Time
Choson Ilbo
8/5/2010
UPDATE: According to Yonhap:
South Korean soldiers have found a total of 91 land mines believed to have washed into the South from the North by heavy rains, military officials said Saturday.
ORIGINAL POST: According to the New York Times:
A man in the South Korean border town of Yeoncheon, northeast of Seoul, was killed Saturday when one of two land mines he had picked up from a stream exploded, the Defense Ministry said. A friend was seriously injured and hospitalized.
The scare came amid heightened vigilance against North Korea, following the March sinking of a South Korean warship in border waters that was widely thought to be caused by a North Korean torpedo attack. On Sunday, South Korea sent a message urging North Korea to prevent its land mines from washing downstream to the South, the Defense Ministry said in a statement.
The authorities also distributed pamphlets, which carried photos of the North Korean mines, warning people living near the border not to touch objects that look like the land mines.
In towns and islands downstream from North Korea, officials using megaphones urged villagers and vacationers to stay off the streams and beaches.
Soldiers with minesweepers were searching river beds where the floods have retreated. Since Friday, they have found 35 land mines. The mines, built in wooden boxes, were designed to explode when pressed or opened.
“The mines were apparently swept down from North Korea after torrential rains,” said an official from the Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing his office’s policy. He said that the safety pins of some recovered mines were not removed, indicating that they had been in storage when they were swept away.
Read the full story here:
In Koreas, Floods Carry Land Mines
New York Times
Choe Sang-hun
8/1/2010
