South Korea’s military confirmed Sunday it has detected signs of North Korea’s development of a submarine-based ballistic missile launch system.
In a report to an opposition lawmaker, the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said there is an indication that the North is developing a submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM).
“There is no intelligence yet that North Korea has an SLBM in operation. But the possibility of a North Korean submarine equipped with an SLBM has been detected recently,” the JCS said in the document submitted to Rep. Jin Sung-joon of the main opposition New Politics Alliance for Democracy. [Yonhap]
You can read more at the link, but developing a submarine based missile launch capability is very difficult and why so few nations have this capability. It just makes me wonder if the North Koreans are just putting out fake mock ups in order to confuse intelligence analysts. They have been accused of doing this in the past.
The guy had been the submarine’s navigator, and had lived on a North Korean naval base since the age of 14. Subsequently he knew very little beyond daily life on the base, and he was unfamiliar even with what the rest of North Korea is like. For example, he didn’t know what money was. He’d never needed any. When the South’s intelligence agency was done interrogating him and it came time to give the poor guy some orientation about South Korean society, one of the questions he asked at the end was how some bills could have more value than others when they’re all the same size. Shouldn’t the paper that you can buy more soju with be bigger?
When I met him we were also in the presence of a lady, yet he frequently reached down and scratched or held his privates. He had a lot of questions for me even though I was there to interpret. Is South Korea so expensive because there are so many foreigners here? Does each star on the American flag representone of the wars it has won? What happens if you don’t have the money to pay for the subway? Do South Korean women like men who wear ties better than those who don’t?
Read the rest on your own but it is an enlightening look into the wonders of Juche.
