The democratic People’s Republic of Korea (or North Korea as we’ve come to know it)
has been sealed off from the outside world since 1953.
Not that that stopped the antics of its former leader Kim Jong-il fueling an entire industry
of sensational stories, which clogged the internet and even mainstream media.
But how much of what we’re told about North Korea is actually true?
I’m Stu, this is Debunked, where we sort the truths from the myths and facts from the
misconceptions.
Okay, so let’s kick things off with a look at a handful of reports you’ll probably
have come across since Kim Jong-un became supreme leader back in 2011.
In 2012, a story circulated that Jong-un had assassinated his pop star girlfriend, Hyon
Song-wol, for making a sex tape. However, a year after her reported murder...
...she made a miraculous appearance on state television, delivering a speech at a national
art workers rally. She didn’t seem particularly dishevelled, considering she’d just risen
from the dead.
That same year, a gruesome report spread like wildfire that the Supreme Leader had executed
his uncle, Jang Song-thaek, for insubordination. It was claimed that Jang and five aides had
been stripped naked and fed to one hundred and twenty dogs.
The ghastly method of execution, which was said to have lasted an hour and been watched
by North Korean officials, shocked the world. BUT the original source of the story was later
traced back to Chinese satirical blog: Tencent Weibo. Jang was executed, but he was most
likely killed by firing squad and not eaten alive by ravenous dogs.
Fast forward to 2015 and splashed across the headlines of newspapers, radio and TV was
yet more appalling news. This time Kim Jong-un had apparently executed one of his Generals
with an anti-aircraft gun for falling asleep during an official state event. Notice the
word apparently there.
Because while the story was originally reported by South Korea’s national intelligence agency,
and then circulated across the globe, there was just one problem - it wasn’t entirely
accurate. They later changed the report to say the General had been “purged” for
“dozing off” and that they could not confirm whether he was alive or not.The general’s
death has since been confirmed - but the circumstances surrounding it are still unclear. It’s believed
he was executed after North Korean authorities gathered information against him from wiretapped
conversations.
When a story is reasonably true it can be polluted with so much misinformation that
it draws into question the entire report.
Michael Madden, Founder of North Korea Leadership Watch says…
Sadly for Mr. Madden though, it seems like that well is far from dry because, in 2016,
the news was plastered with headlines that Kim Jong-un had eliminated another of his
Generals - Ri Yong-gil… It took just a few months for those headlines to be followed
by these, when Ri was seen at the Worker’s Party Conference.
Moving on from the grisly reports of assassination and execution, let’s take a look at the
utterly ridiculous stories that have been doing the rounds on the internet.
In 2012, it was reported that an archaeologist had discovered a unicorn lair in Pyongyang,
the story was nicely accompanied with a photoshopped horse. Everyone in the West thought it was
hilarious, especially since this was an official report released by the Korean Central News
Agency. They even went as far as saying that hidden inside the lair was one of the unicorns
ridden by ancient Korean King Tongmyong.
But this isn’t as crazy as the media would have us think. The report has been assessed
by
Sung-Yoon Lee, a professor at Tufts University, who believes it to actually be a symbolic
piece of propaganda…
With North Korea’s official news agencies releasing symbolic, but not necessarily true
stories like this to the rest of the world, it’s hard to establish what’s fact and
what’s fiction in the reclusive state. So let’s take a look at the long standing and
more widely held beliefs about the country.
Scenes like this...
...have strengthened the perception that North Korea is a nation that functions as one in
total uniformity, but Jieun Baek, author of North Korea’s Hidden Revolution, reminds
us that the North Korean people are just that… people.
Of the thirty thousand defectors that have now settled in South Korea, around 80% of
them come from two of the nine provinces inside North Korea.
Do they all have the same beliefs and thoughts? Hardly.
Baek’s research has shown that they’re like any group of people, displaying a wide
variety of opinions.
You might be thinking, sure, of course the defectors show signs of protest and disagree
with the regime, but North Koreans citizens have a history of challenging the regime.
We’re talking failed coups, assassination attempts, and even riots - we just don’t
hear about it.
As far back as the Korean War itself in the 1950s, there was a rebel group of twenty two
thousand North Koreans who fought against Kim il-Sung - the original supreme leader.
And these sort of incidents aren’t exactly ancient history, in the 1980s during a period
of severe economic hardship there were numerous clashes between the military and civilians
over food shortages. These disputes ended in the deaths of thousands of farmers, laborers
and political prisoners.
Things got even worse for the regime just a decade later, when the military themselves
turned on the Kim family and plotted to assassinate key members, with the intention of putting
General O Kuk-ryol in charge. In the end, the General proved too loyal and reported
the coup to the authorities. He remains a key figure in the current regime.
But not all forms of protest in North Korea are violent. The new millennium also brought
with it a new type of subversion,
with smuggled information from the outside world entering through forbidden goods like
cells phones, CDs and DVDs. It’s also reported that corrupt officials often overlook these
contraband items and have even assisted defectors in escaping to China.
So while scenes like this might imply some kind of obedient hive mind, life in North
Korea is more fractured than the news would have us believe.
Another problem with a lot of the information we get about the secretive state is that it
relies on the testimonies of defectors - who, presumably, don’t really like the regime
too much.
But issues with defectors’ stories run far deeper than that,
as journalist Jiyoung Song found out after studying such testimonies for over 15 years.
For a start, defectors are paid for their stories and, according to the South Korean
Ministry of Unification, these fees can range from fifty to five hundred dollars per hour.
The more shocking, exclusive and emotional the story, the greater the fee. Basically,
defectors have an incentive to exaggerate or simply make things up.
Probably the most famous example of this is in the best-selling book ‘Escape from Camp
14’ - the story of Shin Dong-hyuk, who was the only person born in the gulag to have
escaped. Nevertheless, when Shin’s father claimed the stories were false, Shin confessed
that some of his accounts were inaccurate.
There is no doubt that North Korea has committed horrific human rights abuses, but examples
like this raise questions about how reliant we should be on defectors’ testimonies.
Choi Sung-chol, from the Korean Nationality Residents Association, explains that inconsistencies
in defectors stories are hard to identify because...
“Most North Koreans do not worry about small factual mistakes as long as the big picture
that North Korea violates human rights is right.”
This brings us onto the misconception that North Koreans only leave the country by defecting
and escaping the regime. Although the West may have little to do with the country, many
parts of Asia and even parts of Europe do have business with them.
The so called ‘Hermit State’ has logging projects going on in Russia and construction
projects in Qatar. While over in Mongolia, North Koreans work producing goods for clothing
brands like Australian surf company Rip Curl. Thousands actually work in China, many in
North Korean restaurants. Heading further west, you can find many are employed in Polish
shipyards, construction sites and farms. And if you ever pay a visit to Angkor Wat in Cambodia,
then the museum there was built by a North Korean construction company.
Each of these workers are believed to be hand picked from families that are loyal to the
state, but even these loyalists have been know to defect.
It’s estimated that there are fifty to one hundred thousand North Koreans who have been
sent to work abroad. Although it is claimed by human rights campaigners, that ninety percent
of their earnings are sent back to the regime, after having worked ten to twelve hour shifts
and a six day week.
A claim which was refuted by the North Korean Embassy in Warsaw who stated in July 2016...
"This is all nonsense.” “Nobody is taking (their salaries), they
work and make money for themselves."
But according to a UN report from 2015, these overseas workers are big business for the
North Korean state, earning the regime between one point two to two point three billion dollars
each year.
And by earning this extra income, the human rights organizations claim that Pyongyang
is trying to circumvent the international sanctions that aim to starve the state of
its money over its controversial nuclear weapons programme.
Now you’ve probably heard a lot about the supposed threat posed by North Korea’s nukes,
but are we really all at risk of being obliterated by Kim Jong-un?
Well, it seems like it depends on where you live.
In April 2017 the Australian Foreign Minister, Julie Bishop was warned by General Vincent
K Brook, the commander of US and UN forces in Korea,
that Australia would soon be in range of North Korea’s nuclear arsenal.
But how close is North Korea from making intercontinental missiles capable of carrying a nuclear warhead?
According to recent news reports North Korea has launched more test missiles and detonated
more nuclear bombs than ever since Kim Jong Un came to power in 2011.
With three of the five nuclear tests being conducted under his rein and a whopping ninety
missile launches up until May 2017. The regime has also claimed that the underground nuclear
detonation in September 2016, tested a warhead that can successfully be mounted on to a missile.
And in 2017 a series of missile tests that landed in The Sea of Japan rose tensions and
lead to the US starting joint military drills with South Korea, plus a whole heap of provocative
exchanges between the US and North Korea
At another test launch in May 2017, North Korea claimed its missile, called the ‘Hwasong-12’,
was a ballistic missile capable of carrying a heavy nuclear payload. Put this together
with the ‘claimed’ results of the September nuclear test and hey presto North Korea should
have a nuke..
Okay, so let’s park the nuclear stuff for now. I guess the question any American viewers
are asking is ‘This is great, but how far off are they from being able to hit good old
US territory with a long-range missile?’
To understand this we need to know the basics of how a Nuclear Intercontinental Ballistic
Missile, or ICBM, works. And for this we need diagrams. Lots of lovely diagrams.
So… The missile fires straight up with the power of all its engines. Then at a specified
distance above the earth it is guided into an arc, which is calculated to hit the earth
over five thousand five hundred kilometers away.
After the initial thrust, the booster section disconnects. The ICBM then continues on its
remaining engine until it hits its maximum speed. Now the ‘re-entry vehicle’ containing
the payload (in this case the nuclear warhead) will separate from the rest of the missile
and continue travelling above the earth’s atmosphere.
Then, when it reaches the target area, it is guided to re-enter the atmosphere. The
problem at this point is that the payload risks burning up and disintegrating, much
like a meteor does when it enters our outer atmosphere, so the ‘re-entry vehicle’
must be stable enough to withstand this descent.
That’s it in a nutshell.
Okay, so that made it seem really easy, but for North Korea to strike the US they would
need a missile to fly at least eight thousand kilometres
(4,800 miles).
The recent Hwasong-12 test only flew a lateral distance of seven hundred and eighty seven
kilometers but this was fired at a very steep angle in order to avoid flying over neighboring
countries, and was on trajectory that reached an altitude of two thousand, two hundred and
eleven point five kilometers. These statements were released by North Korea’s official
news agency, and are consistent with the South’s and Japan’s assessments.
It’s estimated that if the Hwasong-12 was fired at a standard trajectory then the missile
would likely have reached a lateral distance of at least four thousand kilometers.
While this may not be enough to strike the US or to qualify it as a ICBM, it helped them
take a big step forward in developing an Intermediate-range Ballistic Missile (IRBM).
And in fact, the week after the Hwasong-12 test, North Korea launched the Pukguksong-2;
a medium-range ballistic missile, which travelled approximately four hundred and eighty kilometers.
The KCNA state news agency claim it was so successful that it will be put into mass production,
even though it was only its second ever test launch.
But could their current development of an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile withstand
atmospheric re-entry?
It’s believed that the high altitude that the Hwasong-12 reached during its test launch
was also to assess its re-entry capabilities,
with KCNA reporting that the missiles homing feature made it possible to survive re-entry
under the worst possible conditions and allow it to still accurately detonate.
The South Korean military however said it was unlikely that the North had developed
its atmospheric re-entry to this level. A point reinforced by German Aerospace Engineer
Markus Schiller...
South Korea’s Science and Technology Policy Institute believes it’s still difficult
to judge when the North will have a reliably tested ICBM, saying that developed countries
will have tested at least twenty ICBMs with a success rate of ninety percent before they’d
be ready to deploy.
Professor Siegfried Hecker, an expert on plutonium at Stanford University, suggests...
Either way North Korea is continuing its nuclear program in defiance of increased UN sanctions,
and recent satellite images indicate that more nuclear tests may be planned.
But to turn this all on its head, Mr Schiller is sceptical about whether North has even
actually developed a working nuclear warhead and...
“NOT JUST SOME NUCLEAR DEVICE THAT GOES BOOM IN A TUNNEL, UNDER LABORATORY CONDITIONS"
So what can we do with a problem like North Korea?
Sanctions don’t seem to have the desired effect or are possibly being circumvented
by cunning money-making schemes. So what about a military response?
If the US were to launch a preemptive strike on North Korea, experts believe there is no
conceivable way of destroying all of their nuclear weapons.
The US wouldn’t know where they all were, plus road-mobile and submarine-launched missiles
are currently being developed.
Even if it was possible to destroy them all, they wouldn't be able to strike without causing
them to detonate creating a mushroom cloud across the Korean Peninsula, and with the
South’s capital city Seoul and it’s ten million inhabitants only fifty six kilometers
from the North Korean border, the number of casualties would be colossal.
When North Korea first began developing their nuclear capabilities, the US President at
the time - Bill Clinton - considered a military strike and the estimated casualties then,
were in the hundreds of thousands, and that was before they had nuclear weapons.
Professor Siegfried Hecker, believes the US and South Korea consider the consequences
of military intervention unacceptably high, and that they will only take the military
option if North Korea initiates them first.
“It is quite clear that [North Korea] wants to threaten Washington with such a capability,
but to launch would be suicidal, and I don’t believe the regime is suicidal.”
This was reinforced by statements from the Aerospace Corp in April 2017
In the meantime the US has deployed the TERMINAL HIGH ALTITUDE AREA DEFENSE ANTI-MISSILE SYSTEM
or THAAD to South Korea, which acts as a missile defence shield that will intercept any short
to medium range missiles.
Sure, all this talk of a fiery nuclear apocalypse sounds terrifying, but even after all this,
we still can’t be sure just how close North Korea is to joining the nuke weapons clubs.
Yet one thing is for sure - not everything you hear about North Korea
is true.