Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on Forgotten Weapons. I'm Ian.
I'm here today at the Rock Island Auction House taking a look at some of the cool guns coming up for sale
In their April of 2015 premiere auction,
And there's one in this auction that is just an absolute hen's tooth.
It is a North Korean 'Type 70' semi-automatic pistol.
What makes this so incredibly cool to find is the fact that it's North Korean,
Obviously North Korea is a very insular country, they don't export their guns and it's extremely rare to find
Especially relatively modern North Korean guns. Even North Korean SKSs are very unusual.
To find a pistol like this... I frankly didn't think I'd ever actually see one, so we're definitely going to take this opportunity to take a closer look
A little bit of background on North Korea's automatic pistols; The first one they adopted in the relatively modern era
Was the 'Type 64', which was a direct copy of, get this, the 'Browning 1900'
Now you might wonder why on Earth they would copy a Browning 1900 of all things, when there are so many much more modern pistols around
Well, no one obviously knows because you can't just go and ask them
But the suspicion is in 1909 a Korean military officer actually assassinated an influential Japanese politician using a Browning Model 1900.
At the time of course and for pretty much ever, Japan and Korea have had a very unpleasant relationship with each other
So this was an act of political defiance by this Korean officer, and it's been memorialized
And it seems likely that North Korea found a lot of symbolic value in the Browning 1900
And that's why they decided to copy it, because of that specific incident, well
It does have the one additional benefit of they're able to easily mount a suppressor on it
Because the 1900 has its barrel down below its recoil spring so they can put a regular round suppressor on it
And still be able to use the sights on the pistol. Which is kind of cool.
So, they only they only made those Type 64s for a little while before they also introduced the 'Type 68'
Which is a pretty generic copy of the 'Tokarev' pistol
And that was what was used for standard military troops and officers
There's only the high-ranking guys that got the more special pistols like the 64 and like this Type 70.
This is in .32 Automatic, and it has some elements very reminiscent of a number of different designs
So why don't I bring the camera back here and we'll take a closer look and see all the good details.
Alright, so, obviously we'll start by pointing out the big North Korean Emblem on both sides of the grips.
And the markings on the side of the slide here say "Type 70", then we have that star again and "7.62"
This it's interesting as this is actually 7.65, It's in .32 ACP or 7.65mm Browning.
Looking at the mechanical details, this has elements of the PPK, has elements of the Makarov,
But it's not a direct copy of any single gun.
So we have an exposed hammer, but it's single action only.
Once the hammer is down the trigger doesn't do anything.
Although you can see it moving back there above the grip.
From the front it has a profile that is actually pretty distinctively Makarov looking, but it's not a Makarov.
The safety is this crossbar right here,
Push it in and it's on safe, like so
We have a heel magazine release. The magazine on this particular one is mismatched.
But I don't think that's a big issue considering your chances of ever finding another Type 70.
There we go, seven round capacity in our magazine.
It does lock open on an empty magazine, but then nothing holds the slide open when you pull the mag out.
So if you lock it open and then pull the magazine it drops the slide immediately.
Alright, so the other function of this safety button is to actually act as the main disassembly catch
So what we do, let me take the magazine out,
We push this button
Hold a little bit of tension back here
And it's interesting, the barrel is not fixed, the barrel is in the slide.
So I actually want to hold a little bit of tension on the barrel and I can push that button through
See it starts to come out this side
and just hold there...
I'll use my 'precision plastic disassembly tool' here
And this locking block comes right out.
Then the slide comes off the top of the gun
We have a very simple frame right there
What's more interesting is the way the slide is put together. We have our removable barrel.
It is actually not fixed to the frame. It is simply held in place by that locking block, connected to the frame.
The barrel assembly and recoil spring come out just like this.
And I believe, I could be wrong, but I believe this is just a little recoil buffer.
So that's it. That's all there is to this guy.
Short barrel. It's actually a very comfortable gun to handle.
Typical spring-loaded firing pin, you can see that working there.
No frame-mounted safety like you would find on a PPk or a Makarov. No decocker.
It's not double-action, you just have your crossbolt safety.
So, to reassemble, stick that in
Compress the recoil spring
Drop the barrel down into place like that
And then this slides right on
And you can see the lug lining up right down there
This actually needs to come through from this side
Just hold that back
And it goes in through the spring and there we go, safe and ready to fire.
Well, thanks for watching guys, I hope you enjoyed the video
It's certainly a treat to get a chance to look at a gun that is so unusual as this North Korean Type 70
What's even cooler is that it is for sale!
So if you'd like to own this for your own personal collection, perhaps you represent the CIA
And you don't have one of these in your institutional collection, and you'd like it, well
I have a link below to Rock Island's catalog page for it
So you can take a look at their catalog description, their high-res pictures
And get all the information you need to set up an account and place a bid or come down here to Illinois and bid in person
Thanks for watching!