Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I am here today at Rock Island
taking a look at a North Korean M49. This is North Korea's
copy of the Soviet "Papasha" 41 submachine gun.
It is chambered for 7.62x25mm Tokarev,
and these were made for about 6 years in North Korea.
Now a lot of different countries copied the Papasha,
it was a very simple, very effective gun.
The Soviets were happy to let people make use of the technical data package,
which isn't all that complicated for it really, there are very few parts to this thing.
Now the Soviet Union itself got away from the Shpagin,
and they transitioned in late World War Two to the PPS-43 Sudayev.
Which was, believe it or not, a cheaper and simpler gun to make.
It was also a lighter gun, it didn't use drum magazines, it was a little more reliable,
and it had a little bit less insane rate of fire.
This thing runs at about 900 rounds per minute.
Now the North Koreans, along with the Poles, the Hungarians, the Chinese,
all sorts of people, copied these guns.
North Korea in particular did this, starting in 1949, in a factory basically in Pyongyang,
which is not that far into North Korea.
And in fact in the fall of 1950, US and British forces captured Pyongyang,
which presumably was a little bit of a shocker to the North Koreans running the factory.
They managed to retake the city, with Chinese intervention, only a couple of months later.
And promptly moved the PPSh factory a bit farther north
where it was less likely to get captured again.
And they would continue to manufacture these until 1955.
So, let's take a look at the few specific items that make this stand out as a North Korean pattern gun.
From the front we have the typical ventilated barrel shroud.
And that's on there because basically the whole upper half of this gun
is a single piece of heavy-gauge sheet steel
that is bent over a mandrel, and then welded together up here.
And you can see it's been pressed together, they didn't even bother welding
... it together on those barrel vents because it's not going anywhere.
There's a very simple trunnion that is riveted in place here that holds the barrel in.
And then you have a lower assembly.
Like, that's all that's going on here. This is a tremendously simple submachine gun.
It does feed from both drum and box magazines.
The drum holds 71 rounds and is quite popular because this thing has an insane rate of fire.
So a large capacity magazine is necessary if you want to shoot for more than about 2 seconds.
The stick magazines are less sexy looking but more reliable,
and hold about half the ammunition, 36 rounds.
The magazine catch right here actually does fold up when you're not using it.
This looks from a distance perhaps like a second trigger, but this is actually the selector switch.
So in the front position this is full-auto,
and you can snap it backwards and that puts the gun in single shot, semi-auto mode.
The only safety on it is this ... snap catch on the bolt handle
which allows you to lock the bolt in the forward or (in theory) rearward position.
Now for distinctive markings, the best one is right here ... basically over the chamber.
We have this five-pointed star in a double circle, and that is North Korea.
Date is 1949, so this is actually a first year of production M49, that's kind of cool.
It has a square ejection port, which is worth pointing out,
some variations of the Papasha have an oval ejection port.
And it also has these reinforcing tabs that slip over the wood to help protect it,
and prevent the wood from chipping away at the front.
So that is distinctive of a Russian pattern of Papasha.
There are a few elements where like the Russians and the Chinese
built these guns a little bit differently,
and the North Korean guns are a bit of a mixture of the two.
We have a two position rear notch sight. One is set for 100 and marked 10, right there.
And the other is 200 metres and marked 20.
The serial number is behind the ejection port.
I don't know my Korean written language well enough, or at all,
so that looks like an English "L",
LL816, but maybe that's a different Korean character, I simply don't know.
The North Korean M49s also have a stock that is slightly distinctive.
It's got a little bit of an oval shape to it down here,
which is just a little bit different than some of the other national patterns.
This one has a really gnarly set of sling bits on it
that's built from what appears to be a US actual shooting sling.
This could be Korean War vintage, this could be Vietnam War vintage,
or this could be something that some owner in the '60s or '70s
put together to use on it. I have no way of knowing that.
Unfortunately, while this gun is registered as fully transferable,
it does have a plugged barrel there.
So the gun's not going to fire without some gunsmithing work to it.
We don't know the exact path that this particular gun took to get into the US.
These were obviously used in the Korean War, and it
could have been taken as a souvenir by a soldier there and brought back to the US.
These were also exported to North Vietnam during the Vietnam War,
and it's possible that it came back from Vietnam as a war trophy.
Either way, it is registered today as a fully transferable machine gun in the US,
which is pretty cool.
So anyone who wants to use it would have to fix the deactivation first,
but that's not a big deal, the important part is it's legally registered as a transferable gun.
So, hopefully you guys enjoyed the video. Thanks for watching.