Kim Jong Un’s Excellent Adventure

Jeffrey Lewis 0:06

You are listening to the Arms Control Wonk podcast, a podcast on arms control disarmament and nonproliferation. I'm Dr. Jeffrey Lewis, a professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey and the founding publisher of the Arms Control Wonk blog.

Scott LaFoy 0:22

And I'm Scott LaFoy, super producer at the Arms Control Wonk podcast and senior director for nuclear and technology security programs at Exeter Government Solutions.

Jeffrey 0:31

Scott, we have a guest. We do.

Scott 0:34

Hey, Sam. How are you doing today?

Sam Lair 0:37

Sam, introduce yourself. I'm really glad to be here. It's a longtime listener, first-time caller situation for me. So very excited to be on the pod talking with you all about North Korea today.

Jeffrey 0:48

Tell the people who you are, Sam.

Sam 0:51

My name is Sam Lair. I am a graduate research assistant at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies. I work on the open source intelligence team with Jeffrey. And I am a student at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey.

Jeffrey 1:05

You may know Sam if you follow my Twitter feed, because Sam is frequently depicted as a North Korean child laborer because he is, I believe, our youngest graduate research assistant. Is that true? I think second youngest. I also received punching bag duties for my occasionally dubious music taste. Yet Sam likes the Grateful Dead, which I can't, I can't abide. But but what are you gonna do? He's good at geolocating, which is why, why he's here.

Scott 1:34

We had quite a bit to geolocate in the last couple weeks, haven't we?

Jeffrey 1:39

Yeah. So listeners, we've had two pretty big visits from Kim Jong-un to defense factories. And I know that we constantly make the joke, test a missile, get a pod. But the core of what we do in terms of open source work at The Middlebury Institute is really trying to track the defense production base in North Korea, because it's one thing to see the missile when it happens, but if you want to see the missile that's going to come next, right, if you want to anticipate what's going to happen, what you really need to look at is the changes you see at all the factories. And that requires knowing where the factories are, understanding what the different buildings do, and having some, some sense of the technological processes and machine tools and so on and so forth.

We just don't get in all that often, but, oh boy, Kim Jong-un did two tours. One was announced that on August 3 through 5, he visited five different facilities, including, what, Sam, probably three in Jagang province? Yeah, three. And then on August 11, and 12, he did the East Coast listeners can't see it, but I'm making an East Coast gang signs not very effective, as it turns out, where he visited for more defense facilities, including some world friends.

So holy cow, we we have been busy, Sam, you've been you've been getting into work every day pretty early.

Sam 3:11

Yeah, we've had to come in early, especially since the North Koreans are really eager for us to not know where some of these facilities are. So some of these have been a little bit more difficult to crack than others. But we think we've got a pretty good handle on where everything is at this point.

Scott 3:28

I think we should walk through each of these facilities, what we've kind of seen at each one, what it does. Because one of the big things is that we got imagery from each of these and they have a different function. They support different weapon systems, that sort of thing. So do we want to break this up by announcement?

Do you want to walk through first off that first set of announcements, the third to the fifth, the five plant whirlwind first?

Jeffrey 3:51

Yeah, absolutely. So the North Koreans didn't tell us where anything was, but they told us the functional purpose of each of the factories. And so one factory made 600 millimeter artillery rockets. One factory was totally undescribed in its purpose other than to say that it was a new light electrical appliances factory that would modernize the KPA. It was a new construction.

There was a small arms factory. There was a facility for producing engines for cruise missiles and UAVs. And there was a facility for producing transporter erector launchers. The last one was the easiest because it was the March 16th plant outside of Pyongyang where we had seen many, many times. And that, I think, initially led people to imagine that the rest of the visits happened in and around Pyongyang.

But oh no, Sam, they didn't.

Sam 4:46

That's right. So our current theory is that Kim basically got on the train, took the overnight booze coach up to Chagang province, and then kind of worked his way from the top down, going along one of the rivers up there. And so we think he started at that first plant, which... Is ultimately Kangi. My colleague Decker Eveleth did an absolutely miraculous geolocation identifying that.

It's really quite impressive. And then he works his way down the river to the new light electrical appliance factory. And then even further down into the heart of darkness, that being Mupiang Ni, which was actually, I think, the easiest to identify out of the sites because My brilliant colleague, John Ford, most of whom's neurons have been replaced by images of North Korean defense facilities.

Jeffrey 5:46

John was able to... John is a savant when it comes to like sconces in North Korean underground tunnels. Oh, yeah.

Sam 5:54

John was able to pretty quickly gather from the photographs on the wall that this was Mupyong-gi, which in addition to putting notoriously hydraulic arms on tells, it also manufactures a lot of small arms.

Jeffrey 6:07

I mean, I want to put this in context for everybody, because Jagang Province is like the heart of the North Korean defense industry, and Kim does not visit all that often because it's kind of out of the way. And sometimes when he does, they just don't make an announcement because they're pretty secretive about that stuff. My favorite story about the first facility where they make the 600 millimeter artillery rockets, which by the way use, I probably still is makes a bunch of other kinds of munitions, it's like the Oldest, biggest munitions facility in North Korea.

But my favorite story about that place is the founder of the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan, which was the pro-North Korea organization that supported the North Korean economy with remittances and technology, basically got a tour. Of that facility in, in the 80s and wanted to go into the production areas, and they were like, oh no, you can't go in the production areas. And he's like, he literally does the like, don't you know who I am? And, and they're like, we, we know exactly who you are, and you know, most of this equipment was probably imported by you, but no, you may not go in the production areas. And so he calls Kim Il-sung, oh my god, and Kim Il-sung is like Listen, you got to understand, even I don't go in the production areas, which I think was an exaggeration.

But like that gives you a sense of both how important this facility is, how old it is, and we have gotten some visits to it, but we did not know that they had started producing artillery rockets. Sam, Decker's geolocation was great, I have to say, but I do wanna make a point about geolocation, which I think is really important.

If you children had been left to your own devices, you would have scoured Pyongyang.

Scott 8:02

How'd you know to look in the middle of nowhere in Chang'an?

Jeffrey 8:05

Well, I think this is one of the advantages of having a team, right? Because I think all of us individually are really, really talented and good at what we do. But there are little things that each of us are slightly different at. And I just happen to remember that in June 2019, which is the last time Kim Jong-un did a big visit of Jagang province, he appended a visit To the automobile plant outside of Pyongyang.

And so we did a whole bunch of work with some historical materials on North Korea's armaments industries. And just knowing the way the North Koreans work, it was like, okay, well, let's go look at Jagang Province. But I was, I mean, I don't know how you felt, Sam, but boy, those... Tunnels at the Congee what is it, Factory Number 26, which they call the Tractor Factory. That thing has never made a tractor in its life. boy, they really reworked those tunnels.

Sam 9:10

Yeah, so those have gotten a serious facelift. We were going through kind of all of the available imagery that we've had from the various leadership visits over the years. And I believe the first one that we have is from Kim Jong Il in the mid to late aughts. I want to say like 2009 or something like that.

And he doesn't look good. He looks hungover as usual. But the really, really upsetting thing about that is that there's almost no light in there. The walls are totally bare. You know, you can almost you start imagining that you can see a little black splotches from the fires that they used to have on the walls that they never quite got off.

And yeah, so they, they've totally given it a retrofit over time and now it looks great. They've really leaned into the pastel aesthetic that they've been developing and February 11th, which we'll talk about later gotten kind of mint and rose colors. And so Kangi got kind of cream and orange instead. But yeah, they look really good. And they also got a whole slate of new machinery.

Scott 10:14

That's something I wanted to sit on for a second is because like you said, Jeffrey, one of the big things you're actually looking for is how that upstream defense industrial base is starting to put things together. That's usually the invisible part of a missile program. And they've decided to make it really, really visible with these two. Casey and I ran a huge suite of imagery on this.

So I wanted to see Jeffrey and Sam, if y'all had sort of particular takeaways from that Kange plant and the new machinery with it we are seeing there.

Jeffrey 10:45

Well, Sam, I think you're the one who noticed and really has hammered home just so many flow-forming machines.

Sam 10:55

And not just the quantity of the flowforming machines. For those who aren't as kind of in the weeds about this as we are, a flowformer is a way to extrude a metal tube to a degree of thickness, but also strength. That is required for many things. Originally, North Korea was using its flowformers to produce centrifuges. That was the first time that we really became attuned to this.

But now they're using it to produce things like missile airframes. And so the flow formers that they have at Kanghee are really interesting for a couple of reasons. But one of them, I think, is the size. These are, to my estimate, much larger than any of the ones we've seen anywhere else in North Korea. And I think that's because not only are they making centrifuges and airframes, but they're also making the canisters.

For the 600 millimeter artillery rockets that they're producing. So it seems like they've decided this is, you know, a way to efficiently use the infrastructure they have to produce these canisters and ensure that they're kind of strong enough to be used at least once.

Scott 11:59

And I feel like natural question that everyone's going to ask on that is if the machines were visible, was there any visible indication of either foreign import or domestic manufacturing? Which I know is its own art and science to figuring out, but that's the question that's going to come up.

Sam 12:13

Absolutely. So we've spent a pretty decent amount of time trying to kind of identify what the origin of these North Korean flowformers is. And the current theory that we have is that they were able to acquire some foreign flowformers in the past. We believe that the kind of Ur North Korean flowformer was a German Leifeld that they acquired in the mid to late 90s.

And then from there, they were able to kind of, at Kangyi, the KCNA statement actually confirms that the first, they call it a, I think, a hydraulic rotator press or something like that. But the KCNA report for the Cha Gang visit kind of confirms that that occurred at Kangyi. And it seems like they were able to kind of reverse engineer it.

And then they've slowly been scaling it up since then. So our conclusion right now is that this doesn't match any of the flowformers that we've been able to find either used or new. And so we think that it's unlikely it's a foreign import. We think it's probably a domestic manufacturer, but we really can't be sure.

Jeffrey 13:20

That's Kange Tractor Factory. Did not know it was making 600 millimeter artillery rockets, but, you know, not a big surprise.

Sam 13:28

Jeffrey, why do we care about 600 millimeter artillery rockets?

Jeffrey 13:31

Because they're going to have nuclear weapons on them.

Sam 13:34

That's right.

Jeffrey 13:35

So they're going to deploy so many nuclear weapons. I mean, I think the one thing to take away from this visit is, holy crap, are they building a lot of missiles and artillery rockets?

Scott 13:46

And this is the same 600 millimeter artillery system we've covered in previous podcasts of Memory Serves.

Jeffrey 13:51

We have an entire sort of arc. But now we know where they produce them. And by the way, I will say Dave Schmerler had noticed some other facilities around Kongi that we had not had explanations for that we now think are also related to the development and testing of artillery rockets. So it's one of those great things where you've got a facility, you don't know what it does.

And then you get a picture inside another facility and they happen to be next to one another. And you're like, oh, I do know what this thing does now.

Scott 14:16

So does this happen with any of the other four facilities from that group of five on that first trip? I assume we just want to talk about small arms the whole time. Oh, yeah.

Jeffrey 14:27

It's not really just a rifle factory. But wait, before he goes there, and I'm doing this one because Decker did such a magnificent geolocation. Old guy. Needed to show he still had value. So I went and found the light electrical appliances factory, which is a, it's a term of art in North Korea. You also hear called weak current apparatus.

That is a euphemism for missile. So it makes something associated with missiles. We have defector interviews where they've been absolutely clear that if you encounter light electric appliances or weak current apparatus, it is in one way or another a missile production facility. But it's an old, old, old facility. And Sam and I have been staring at historical photographs of this place because it's a really old plant that, Probably was involved in missile production in the past that is being completely rebuilt.

So what missiles do you think it was producing? What, what systems do you think it was doing? And what is it being rebuilt for? Is this like a phasing out of an old system? Is this a, a? So we can't tell, because the problem is the best source that we have on all these facilities in, in Jagang Province is this guy Kochong Song, who wrote a great book. I mean, it's, he's a, I mean, very knowledgeable.

There are two factories in this damn valley and then there's the rifle factory a little further down and it's the names and the dates then they were built and like sam and i were downloading you know historical like declassified kh9 photographs of this freaking place they don't quite match up so it might have made electronics for missiles

Sam 16:26

Yeah, I think the situation that we were in was a little awkward because there's the number 11 factory and the number 81 factory. They're both in the same valley. One of them is underground. One of them is not. One of them was built in 1968. One was built in 1970. So the imagery shows the... The one that was torn down and is now currently being reconstructed is the one that was built in 68.

But the documentation from the defector says that was the facility that was underground. So, you know, this is, I think, also the difficulty with relying on kind of one source of information like defectors is that it will be soon.

Jeffrey 17:05

Huge UGF going in.

Scott 17:08

So are they burying the facility or are they expanding underground? Just to clarify for listeners.

Jeffrey 17:15

Michael was able to find an ancillary UGF that looks like it's gonna end up being really, really big. Oh yeah, no idea what they're gonna do with it. It's just, you know, again, so that's, that's, that piece clicking in. That thing clicks into place. You know, you see the big UGF and you're like, wow, that's a big UGF. They're building in the middle of nowhere next to this like, derelict old factory that isn't particularly interesting. But then when they show up and they're like, actually, it's a very interesting factory, we're rebuilding it. You're like, oh.

Well then, yes the Small Arms Plant. See, I think this is interesting because it does make small arms. That is not why he visited that plant. So why did he visit that plant?

Sam 17:58

Yeah. So the plant that we call often called Mukyung-ni is also known as the number 65 factory. And it's the first basically armaments or munitions factory that was established in North Korea. So it was originally founded kind of closer to Pyongyang. And then the war happens, and you don't want your stuff either being overrun by the United States and UN forces, or you don't want it to get destroyed by the vastly superior US Air Force.

So you move it up to Chagang. So that's how it ended up there. But this is the original factory. And ultimately, everything within what used to be called the second economy, which is kind of North Korea's parallel defense economy, Operated out of, or, or, you know, paid homage to to Mipyongni number 65. And so that's why, you know, we think Kim stops here is not only because it produces things other than small arms, which they did not deign to show us this time, but also because all of the factories nearby are technically subsidiary to it.

And so in kind of the knife fighting world of, you know, North Korean internal politics, it would probably behoove Kim to make sure that the person who who runs this factory gets gets his due. Right. Respect the organizational structure that's in place.

Jeffrey 19:25

Yeah. I mean, this is kind of the point of like how we ended up looking in Kongi because. The question is, where were all these factories? And the rifle factory is like a thing you see in North Korean propaganda. And it's like, why is Kim Il-sung posing with a rifle? Why is Kim Jong-il posing with a rifle?

Why are they constantly doing the small arms thing? Because it seems so... Incongruous with the big arms that we're really interested in? And the answer is because it all starts with the rifle factory. And so even though that place now makes all kinds of other things, like it's where we identified the North Koreans built the hydraulic arms and refurbished the tells that they imported from China in the kind of 2010s, but it started with small arms.

And so like when you go there, like you go there first, And of course you fire a gun because that's like the thing that you do. Of course. And that's like what the museum shows.

Sam 20:24

It's also very funny. Those photos are hysterical.

Jeffrey 20:27

I know. The one with Zhou Yun Wang, like kind of staring at the camera with the gun, like he's going to shoot the cameraman is hilarious.

Sam 20:34

But he's talking about all the imperialists he's killed.

Jeffrey 20:37

But then all the factories spin off that. So the Congee Tractor Factory spins off this. It's, you know, it's its own thing now, but it's still, I think, technically subordinate. And then a lot of the other factories in the valley spin off one or the other. And so he has to go. He says it's for small arms, but they make components for missile launchers, and they probably do a lot of other construction that we have, we have just never seen. I mean, this is after all the place where they have done, I don't know, four or five missile launches now.

Right it's where they did one of the the hua song 14 icbms it's where they did the hypersonic glide vehicle you know i just i i can't keep track like this is a this is a pretty big place they call it a rifle factory but this is one of the the absolute beating hearts of the ballistic missile production lines basically Yeah and you know like even if he's not going there to see something that's missile related like he's still going to go there if he's in the neighborhood well it would be weird not to go and and like you do yeah it would it literally would be rude right I mean it would be it would be an affront to the person you've put in charge of your defense industry which they're just not going to do and like the thing you do is you go there and you fire a gun right and there are like

A ton of pictures of Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-il, and Kim Jong-un at this place firing guns. It's just the thing you do. So yeah, yeah, small arms factory, okay, it is, but it also is not.

Scott 22:11

So what is left on the list from the August 6th group? So the tail factory in Pyongyang.

Jeffrey 22:18

The which factory? The transporter erector launcher factory. And they are. They're not males. I know you got like a thing about this.

Scott 22:26

So this is the end of the trip, though. So after he comes back down from Taedong. OK, so now we get back to Pyongyang. We're going to go see some missile launchers. And for listeners who are brand new, transporter erector launchers are the big integrated trucks that they fire missiles off the back. Of. And tracking these has been a really core part of North Korean defense analysis for the last 15 years.

After six big ones were imported from China, it's always been a huge deal figuring out Whether or not they had reverse engineered them, whether or not they could create them themselves. It's always been a point of contention. And so they were kind enough to show us some pictures to try to make an argument that I think y'all would argue they can now make them domestically.

Jeffrey 23:13

Yeah, I mean, I don't know what Sam thinks. We're going back and forth on this. It's hard to know. You know, they might be bringing the chassis in and just refurbishing them, which I think you probably have to do because I think they beat the hell out of them when they test off them. But there has been some really credible reporting in kyoto news by tomo in a way who has a new amazing book out on north korea's armaments program that i have a copy of in japanese so it's a like zero use to me but you know like people should buy tomo's book they definitely expanded the floor space at that plant And they showed us a lot of transporter erector launchers.

And so it's possible they brought them all in and, you know, started reworking them or, you know, I don't know. So I don't know. What do you think, Sam?

Sam 24:00

I'll admit that the March 16 plant is something I know very little about. I remember we were talking about this yesterday, though, that it is very difficult to make tells, especially of the kind of the size that they're doing here. One of our colleagues noted that the Russians actually kind of hand off this work to the Belarusians who are much more capable of doing this than they are because they have that kind of that tacit knowledge that they developed over time.

And so I think that's also one of the reasons why we see heavy teleproduction being concentrated in March 16th rather than anywhere else is because they have the folks there who've been doing this for their entire professional careers. So I can't really speak to whether or not they can, but I think that if they were able to, they would be doing it there.

Scott, I missed one.

Scott 24:53

How dare you?

Jeffrey 24:56

Which one did you miss? They gave us only two photographs in the original release. And then in the TV, they gave us four photographs. And Kim only goes to a museum. But it's the factory that produces engines for UAVs and cruise missiles. Ah, yes, the big mystery. We think it's the Pangyan Aircraft Plant. I would say I have moderate to high confidence that's where it is, and we can walk you through the argument. But it's not the other ones are like absolutely dead geolocations, you know, external imagery just absolutely clear where they are. This one, it's a little subtle.

Scott 25:39

Okay, and Sam, before we started the podcast, I believe you said you had pulled a lot of documents trying to chase down Panghyeong and what its purpose was.

Sam 25:47

Yeah, so this was the one that was the real mystery. This was the thing that stuck out to us the most when we got this slate of photos is because they're very careful not to show us anything that could really suggest overtly where this is, right? In the museum, we only see a few photographs that they haven't really, really aggressively blurred out.

And one of them is Kim Jong-un standing, inspecting a jet engine. And this is one of the pieces that helps unlock the puzzle for us is that John, our colleague and Jeffrey are both really attuned to, you know, the who's who of North Korea, of North Korean politics.

Jeffrey 26:30

People, places and things and people come first.

Sam 26:32

Absolutely. And so immediately John and Jeffrey were like, that's Kim that's Kim Jong-il with Yonghyang Muk. And so that was really something that helped us identify where the facility is.

Jeffrey 26:44

By the way, we call Lurch, but you know, he does have a name.

Sam 26:48

Yeah.

Jeffrey 26:49

So Adam's- There's a Lurch biopic, which we have a copy of. It's great.

Sam 26:54

So anyways, they get really excited because they're able to see that the one photo they show us is Lurch and Kim Jong-il with this jet engine. And Lurch is only the head of the munitions industry for about six-ish years, from about 86 to 92, before he does something to make someone sad. And he gets basically downgraded and then sent back home, which for him is jogging.

And so they're perfectly comfortable with him being in jogging.

Jeffrey 27:19

But all of the candidate locations- And in fairness, his protege, John Byung-ho, takes over the job. So this is a soft landing by anyone's standards.

Sam 27:29

Well, he also ends up on the funeral committee for Kim Il-sung. So clearly he didn't piss off anyone too much. But anyways, so Lurch is in this photo. And so that roughly dates when this jet engine plant could have started. And there is really only one location that kind of comes through in the documents. And that is the Pyeongchang Air Force Base.

The CIA identifies that around 1981. There was new construction at Pangaeon that ultimately ended up being a jet engine factory. And the CIA roughly estimates that the date of initial operation for that factory would have been somewhere in the 85 to 87 timeframe. So right when Lerch comes on the scene as kind of a big guy in the munitions industry, we also see Pangaeon start producing jet engines.

And so that kind of coincidence to us really suggests that, you know, this might be where they want to do this. The second reason is that Kim Jong-un visited Pankion twice, once in 2014 and once in 2015. And in 2014, he was really encouraging them to produce what he called light aircraft, which ultimately translates to Cessna-looking type aircraft, but also North Korea still uses a biplane for its military, the Antonov An-2.

And so this kind of pedigree in light aircraft As well as the capability to produce like airframes, and then also jet engines. The April 4th jet engine plant is there, and it's identified by the CIA also as a generator design plant as well, which means that it has some hand in kind of R&D, and really kind of the, we were joking that it's, Pangyan is looking more and more like the Sanamdong of the North Korean jet industry.

Jeffrey 29:23

But but yeah anyways the kind of the light aircraft the secrecy that now surrounds the facility because we haven't heard anything about this since 2015. and then and by the way when he went it he went under a fake name right it was it was one of the classic machine plants managed by that dave and i went through and figured out so it was you know definitely one of those where they did not want to advertise its location and then you know after we after we did that they just i think stopped going all together

Scott 29:50

Well, and something worth noting probably for listeners out there is that airframes, propeller engines, that sort of thing are basically an entirely different technical group than a jet engine. Like jet engines are a step above almost anything else that you're looking at in the non-avionics part of a jet. Is Pyongyang where they have the hush houses, where they have those test cells for, yeah, there's only a couple of those.

Jeffrey 30:12

They also have one at another machine factory. Yes, they do. And so that really... You know, it limits us to those two locations.

Scott 30:22

Yeah. There's only a couple places in North Korea that have overt places where you can test a jet engine at speed indoors.

Jeffrey 30:30

And so one thing that we did was we compared the museums. And since we only see the inside of the museum, and neither of the museums match. But the museum at the other location, which is the January 18th machine plant, really profoundly does not match. Like it does not match in a way that it just, it's extremely unlikely it's the same building.

This museum has the same doors internally, has the same floor-ish, But does not otherwise match, but it was rebuilt in between the period in which we have images inside the museum and after. And so, given the picture on the wall, which would likely have been taken at Pangyan, given the... Closer resemblance of the museum, and given the fact that it was, you know, Sam could see they put on a, you know, a new roof and expanded it, so you, it would naturally have been redecorated. It's not, it's not, you know, it's not just making it up to say like, oh well, maybe they redecorated. And we know they redecorated it.

Sam 31:54

I would also just want to be sure credit where credit's due. Colin Zirko of NK News was the first to suggest Pankeon as a candidate location. And that's because Colin had done some very good work identifying Pankeon as the site where they had tested the drones for the first time.

Scott 32:09

Yeah, that's right. That's a good call.

Sam 32:11

So that's another reason why we think Pankeon makes a lot of sense is if they're doing testing there, they're likely also doing R&D there. And yeah, Colin did some very excellent work on that.

Jeffrey 32:21

Yeah, he'll come up again because we... He beat us on a, on, on this next visit, mostly because it was Sunday and we were just like chatting among ourselves.

Scott 32:32

But Colin's been doing a great job.

Jeffrey 32:36

Colin is a very gifted geolocator. And, and, and I, I think that's, that's really important to say. Okay. So that's, I mean, that was the, that was the West coast facilities, right?

Scott 32:45

So that's, that's a whole nother group of facilities to go. I don't even remember.

Jeffrey 32:50

Wait, that's Tupac, right? It was Tupac West coast. I can't keep, I can't keep straight.

Scott 32:55

You're the Californian, man. I'm from Tennessee and Virginia. I can't, I legally cannot answer that question.

Jeffrey 33:00

This is all before my time. All right, then on August 11th and 12th, he goes to the East Coast.

Scott 33:07

Yes, August 11th to 12th. This announcement came on August 13th. I'm excited to hear y'all talk about this because this is a lot more of the things I get real excited about. What kind of facilities did we see? Where were they? What did they make? And what was the most exciting solid propellant missile evidence that you saw during this time?

Jeffrey 33:25

Yeah, so there were four. There was a facility that makes tactical missiles, which is a facility we know very, very well. There was a TEL factory, which is a facility we know fairly well. There was a combat vehicle plant, combat armored vehicle plant, which is new and previously pinned but unidentified that we now have an answer to.

And one of those cases where I don't really care about combat armored vehicles, but it tells me something very important about the TEL plant. And then fourth, a place that, again, makes MLRS shells. Although it's a little unclear what size. I'm guessing not 600 millimeter artillery. Probably a smaller size.

Scott 34:08

Are we looking more towards grads or are we looking more towards nukes? So it's the sub-nuclear going to be the smaller conventional ones, right?

Jeffrey 34:14

Probably, maybe, I, okay, you know what? If they're very small nukes, they've, they've just developed the grenade. Don't, don't even joke. I wouldn't, I mean, we'll have a podcast on that when it shows up. That device we saw in March was small. Yeah, don't. Okay, so the first facility, which was tactical missiles, so I love this one.

It is the February 11th plant subordinate to the Ryong Song machine complex. And the reason I love this plant is because it used to make tank wheels and tank components. And Josh Pollack and I noticed once that Hamhung is kind of the center of their solid propellant missile industry. Mm-hmm. And we noticed that Kim visited it, this underground facility, and then went and watched the solid propellant missile test.

And we were like, wouldn't it be wild if they had switched it over? And so Josh and I had this conspiracy theory that actually it was secretly involved in the production of missiles. And lo and behold, when Kim went back in January, 2022, they had built a whole new underground tunnel, which we've now documented, which they turned into a KN-23 production line using flow formers and the whole deal.

And then we watched them build out a bunch of above ground facilities. And we were like, oh, they're gonna make a lot of KN23s. And I don't know, man, Christmas came early.

Scott 35:40

And I just have to do this for listeners and myself, because after a certain number of KN numbers, they all sound the same. KN-23, solid propellant, short range, if memory serves. Looks like an Iskander. Looks like an Iskander thing.

Jeffrey 35:54

But is not an Iskander. So I would say two things come out from this research that I think are really interesting. I mean, well, three things. One is they're going to build a, I'm trying not to swear, they're going to build a significant number. Right they have they have really increased the floor space available to do that right second they are flow forming the airframes which we already knew but now we see even more so which is why it's able to do all the aerodynamic maneuvering right that's the technological innovation that allows them to evade missile defenses this is the one that does the dolphin yep the porpoise jump but the third thing which i love and michael duetzman saw this One of the arguments for it being like the Iskander, but not an actual Iskander is that the actuators that control the jet vanes don't look the same.

And they laid out a bunch of actuators on a table for Kim Jong-un to look at. I'm like, yep, those are not Russian actuators. Those are, I don't know, you know, those are clearly some other design, presumably North Korean. So it's not an export of the Iskander. It's just a kind of North Korean variant.

Scott 37:01

Which is a very important difference. The actuators and the nozzle design are actually one of the differentiators to help figure out this kind of thing for that.

Jeffrey 37:09

Yeah, because people say these things all look alike. And they do look alike in terms of their diameter and their proportions for functional reasons.

Scott 37:18

Their aerodynamics look the same. Yeah.

Jeffrey 37:20

Yes, because they do the same thing. Yeah. But the actuators for the jet vanes, that's going to be a real tell. Yep.

Sam 37:28

Another interesting difference between the two is that the Iskander has a space for countermeasures to defeat missile defenses, and the KN-23 does not. We don't see the same type of space for that at the base of the missile where the actuators are.

Jeffrey 37:44

Yeah, and for the longest time we wondered if maybe they just exported them without the, but, but actually it turns out you could just export them empty. You wouldn't have to include the countermeasures. And it turns out the Russians don't care about countermeasures, because now we're finding pen aids all over Ukraine. Which I never thought I would see.

Scott 38:01

Yeah, that different pod, absolutely wild environment now for miscellaneous.

Jeffrey 38:06

Okay, so the other facility.

Scott 38:08

Yep. Wait, did you have a question, Scott? No, I was going to, same thing. Let's talk about the next facility.

Jeffrey 38:13

I don't want to do them in order. Okay, because the other, I mean, I don't know if they were in Ham Hung, they went out and they came back, okay, or if they just obscured the order because they were being a pain. But the other facility is the Tong Hung San Machine Plant, subordinate to the Ryong Song Machine Complex, which for the longest time we suspected.

Was involved in making either surface-to-air missiles or artillery rockets. And now we know makes artillery rockets, and I think may also still be involved in other stuff. That was pretty rad.

Scott 38:48

That was one of the long-time, that was one of my long-time conspiracy theories was looking for those HQ-2 plants that were, not HQ-2s, SA-2 plants that were gonna get eventually converted over into rocket artillery.

Sam 39:00

Please, Scott, the domestically manufactured Pangea 5.

Scott 39:06

Get out. So let's go through it. So talk about it. This is a very interesting conversion that's happening. Or a very interesting change that has happened with this facility.

Jeffrey 39:17

Well, it's just so much bigger. Yeah. I mean, that's the thing that's notable about it. And I would say with this facility, which we have now seen at other ones, the North Koreans are putting less and less underground. Yeah. They still, they still have underground tunnels, and they still dig new underground tunnels, and they still put fancy irreplaceable machine tools in underground tunnels. But they are doing a lot more above ground in this facility, which is old, like, really old.

When it got rebuilt, it has a huge above-ground footprint. And weirdly, this place didn't really get that... I mean, it got a little bit redecorated, but I would say, Sam, what did you think? I thought this was visually the easiest one to pick out.

Sam 40:07

Yeah, I think that's because the rail lines embedded into the floor are really distinctive. And so, you know, a new coat of paint isn't going to change that. And I think that is what really jumps out at me about that facility. I'll admit, I know very little about the Tongan-San machine plant.

Jeffrey 40:22

I mean, it's also just weird. I mean, one observation is almost all of their tunnels have a different structural design, which I find just fascinating. It's really convenient for us that every time they dig a new tunnel, they're like, let's try a new ceiling set up, you know, or like let's fingerprint for them now. Yeah. Like let's give them some unique concrete form styling.

And it's like, I mean, thanks. Like I appreciate it.

Sam 40:57

I mean, if it's the fifties when most of these tunnels are getting, you know, dug out for the first time, I think it's, It's unlikely that you're going to take the time to get everyone together while dodging bombs from the US Air Force to get a committee and be like, okay, guys, unified tunnel design. I don't think that was on the high list of priorities.

I think that might be what drives that.

Jeffrey 41:21

I just like, though, that people are bringing their own little flair to it. I want to know.

Scott 41:25

Do you think every time they show one of these, there's just a different design team and digging team that gets a little prestige boost because they're just like, oh, that's a round top tunnel. We know who did that. Good job, man.

Jeffrey 41:38

I kind of think so, yeah. I mean, it's weird. It's weird. Okay, so that leaves us... The one or two tell factories.

Scott 41:49

Yes.

Jeffrey 41:50

This is, I feel bad because this is both Collins work goes best geolocation ever, but it, it, it, it led him awry.

Scott 42:01

So explain interesting.

Jeffrey 42:04

Okay. So Kim goes up to look at a tele factory and a factory that makes combat armored vehicles.

Sam 42:12

Sure.

Jeffrey 42:14

The Tell Factory is absolutely the Sin Hung Armored Vehicle Plant, and that's a, that's a, Dave and I popped that one open when they used to be really weird about it. Kim Jong-il went and they gave us only two pictures, and when Kim Jong-un went, there was one brief external clip where we were able to work out it was the same place.

And they gave us some shots of the tunnel. They've never given us shots of the big main assembly building. But the main assembly building has a really unusual roof structure. And we saw it filled with transporter erector launchers for short range solid propellant ballistic missiles, like a lot. And our friends at Planet got a spectacular photo of like a dozen of things parked out in front of the building.

Sam 43:07

I think also to kind of head off at the pass, the argument that will inevitably come out that North Koreans have messed with their photos before. And they might have done some slight editing this time to make it look like their tail force is a little larger than it is. And so one of my colleagues, Madeline, went and ran this through our photo fakery software and couldn't find really any evidence of cloning or anything like that.

So based on these photos, these are genuine vehicles.

Jeffrey 43:36

And they're all in, like, you know, slightly different stages of, of, of, of preparation. There are both tracked and wheeled vehicles in there. There are a lot now. Is this the photo that looks like a motor pool? Because it's just everything. Okay, yeah, cool. They're building a lot of nuclear-armed missiles.

Scott 43:54

Of every range class. This also had a memory serve. Didn't this also have some of the ICBMs mixed in with the SRBMs? It's not just a short range.

Jeffrey 44:02

No, no, no, not the, not Sinhung.

Scott 44:04

Sinhung is, no, that's a different set of pictures.

Jeffrey 44:06

Yeah. So the, the tells, there's the tells at March 16th. Okay. In outside of Pyongyang that are ICBM class. These are short range.

Scott 44:15

These are exclusively in the smaller classes.

Jeffrey 44:16

Yeah. And so, I mean, one debate we're having is why no reloaders? Yeah, I know why I think no reload. Because on day one, they're using them all. There's no hold back. On day one, they are laying down as many nuclear weapons against U.S. forces in South Korea and Japan as they possibly can. They're not planning on a reload.

Scott 44:48

So I think for listeners, we should unpack that a little. I hate that, as soon as you said that. But So when we see Chinese and Russian, in particular, missile systems training, they will go through an intentional effort to show a reload or a field reload system. And that's where they basically will take a, well, that's exactly what it sounds like.

You have to be able to pull an old expended missile canister out and replace it with a new missile canister or slip a new missile in. Usually you replace the canister because you've probably burnt it up. And one of the reasons you show this off is to show that even if the United States comes in, even if there's a preemption, even if you do a massive first strike, as long as something survives, there will always be a second wave coming out or a third wave or a sustained nuclear war, whatever you want to extrapolate it out to.

It requires big, heavy vehicles with cranes on them. They're special. You can see them. And so If there's not going to be reloaders, like you said, it's one and done. It's a smoke them if you got them situation. And so the idea would be stacking that deterrence up way in front and not creating that long second strike sort of thing.

Sam 45:59

I think this also might speak to why we see more of those above ground facilities as well, is because unlike the Korean War, where they wanted these facilities underground, where they can survive bombing raids,

Jeffrey 46:10

This one's gonna go quick, and you know, if those facilities are above ground, so be it. Yeah, I mean, I think that's true. They're not planning on fighting a long war of attrition, and it is less efficient to put things underground.

Scott 46:25

And that would be a huge change in how we would even perceive North Korea as like a state like that goes against the whole, you know, stereotype of the fortress state or whatnot. Everything has always been built for long term. Well, everything, hypothetically, if it was well funded and well built, previously has been built for the long war.

And this is this would represent a pretty significant sea change.

Jeffrey 46:47

And that brings us to our last facility that makes combat armored vehicles, because that is entirely above ground. And I just, I feel so bad saying this because Zwerko did one of the most wonderful geolocations I've ever seen. Kim Jong-un actually gets to drive one of these things, right? So he's like, got his head up. He's like driving it.

And then they're, you know, Kim Jong-sik, who is, you know, dramatically, you know, rising in the party, you know, over the last, I don't know, five years. Oh, I didn't mention. Hong Yong-chil is back. We hadn't seen him in like five years. He's a senior North Korean defense official. He disappeared for many, many years. Now he's back.

Maybe demoted. Hard to know. But he looks healthy. Doesn't look like he's been in a labor camp. Might have been sick. Don't know. But yeah, Kim Jong-Sik and a plant manager are riding on top of this vehicle as Kim drives it around. And so Colin geolocates that to the Sin Hung armored vehicle facility. And so he naturally assumes, which is totally reasonable, that this plant makes armored vehicles.

Kim is driving the armored vehicle at the plant. They just, you know, it's just one plant, and they pretended it was two. The problem with that is there are a small number of pictures of him inside the armored vehicle plant, and the workers are dressed differently, which is a real thing in North Korea. Plants have uniforms, and if you have a different color uniform, they're in these, like, god-awful, like, I don't know, what color would you call that?

This...

Sam 48:32

It's like yellow Gatorade color. It's pretty gross.

Jeffrey 48:35

They're just disgusting. And so they're dressed differently. And the interior of the building does not match any of the buildings at Sinhung. Right? Because it has skylights and it has particular window patterns on the door, on the sides. But it does match a large defense facility that we had previously pinned down. Near Sinhung that is entirely above ground and was basically, it was a few little factory buildings that was probably subordinate to Sinhung that got a complete rebuild in the last five years.

And that's, again, one of those things click into place because what that means is, yes, Sinhung was doing combat armored vehicles. But they've decided that they're going to produce huge numbers of missile launchers, and so they had to move that production elsewhere. So it's the fact that they build this new factory for these combat armored vehicles, which is inherently interesting in itself, has an implication for the missile force, which is they have dramatically increased Their production of missile launchers.

And that's why Sin Hung is, I would guess, doing nothing else but pumping out missile launchers. And so they had to move this activity to another location.

Scott 49:57

They've entirely displaced ground forces at that location, basically.

Jeffrey 50:01

Possibly. I mean, they may make, you know, I don't know, you know, you don't know what you don't know. Sure. But the fact that they moved it does seem to indicate that they've displaced, which again is, you know, like, There are going to be a lot of North Korean nuclear weapons. That's why there are so many factories.

The factories are all expanding and other kinds of production is getting pushed to other locations. So there's more floor space and existing floor space is being reallocated. It's gonna be like a couple hundred nuclear weapons when they're done, I think.

Sam 50:37

Another thing that's worth noting about the Sinhung photos that we got is that it shows they're not just producing launchers on wheels, right? They're also producing tracked launchers. And so that suggests that not only are there going to be a lot of them, but they recognize the very real survivability problems that they face. And so they're going to be trying to take these off-road as much as possible to try to kind of disaggregate their forces in a real way.

Scott 51:01

And we've seen that with their testing regime as well over the last few years, seeing them being rail-based, seeing them being tracked, seeing them being tank-based, seeing them be everyone's favorite new one. Lakebed, the best.

Jeffrey 51:14

I'm bummed we didn't get a visit to the locomotive factory making the rail cars. There's a bunch of stuff we didn't get to see, right? We didn't get to see the place that makes the rail cars. We didn't really get to see any of the Pukguksong production infrastructure. There's a bunch of stuff around Kusong that we're really interested in that we didn't get to see.

There are facilities in Ham Hung we didn't see, like, we didn't get to see the Chemical Materials Institute, so I don't know if he visited. I mean, we do have, we do have one case where he admitted that he had visited, I think, Congee in November, and they just didn't report it. And so he's probably, he may have visited those places and we just didn't see it. oh, he didn't go to Kang Dong. Like, there are a bunch of really core defense places he, he didn't let us see. and so I don't know, man, I, a lot of short-range ballistic missiles, a lot of artillery rockets, a lot of cruise missiles, but also there's a bunch of other stuff.

Scott 52:21

I am dying for a single half picture of a casting pit for any solid propellant missile. They are killing me with that. Like, give me something, man. So that covers all of the, what, nine facilities during Kim Jong-un's absolute whirlwind August that he's had so far.

Jeffrey 52:41

Kim Jong-un's excellent adventure.

Scott 52:44

We're only halfway through the month. He could round out those last facilities. He could be there right now.

Jeffrey 52:50

Jong-un and Jong-sik's excellent adventure.

Scott 52:54

So is there anything else y'all want to cover before we wrap up? We've talked about defense posture changes. We've talked about the nature of these facilities.

Jeffrey 53:02

I was happy to see Hong Young-Chil again. I thought he was dead. It gives me hope that John Il-Ho is out there too. Like we watch all these dudes and sometimes they just disappear for years and then you see him back. Oh, also Larry. Larry is still alive.

Scott 53:16

So you have Larry and Lurch?

Jeffrey 53:18

Well, yeah, because you don't always know their names. We didn't know Lurch's name for the longest time, and then eventually we figured it out.

Scott 53:23

It's important to note. It's a good faith movement for us.

Jeffrey 53:27

Yeah, then we forgot it because we're idiots. But the February 11th plant has three plant managers, and they blur their faces now, but they're so distinct in terms of their height and their posture that you can tell it's the same three guys. And we don't know their names, so they're just Larry, Curly, and Moe. Love it. And Larry, who is sort of the most shy, retiring, and maybe lowest ranking of the three.

It's hard to tell. He's definitely not the top. A couple years ago, when Kim Jong-un was touring, let out this giant yawn in the middle of the tour. And you see him literally turn his head away from Kim and step out of the camera's view. And the camera person yanks the camera to not catch Larry. And so we were all like, oh my God, is Larry gonna die?

Then when we, when, when Kim went back in January 2022, we were like, Larry, you're still there? So now, now, in addition to seeing Hung Young Chill still alive, still kicking it knowing that Larry didn't get purged fills me with a good feeling, because you know, I, I'd be on too. He's probably up all night getting ready or just maybe heavily drinking. It's always nice to see your favorite plant manager not get Gulag.

Scott 54:41

Who among us does not have a favorite North Korean defense industrial base plant man? Like sneakers, sneakers up at Shinpo? There's a guy at Shinpo just wears sneakers. He just wears sneakers. Kim shows up, everybody else is in like patent leather, it's like all shined, he's like rocking sneakers. Like you know, you only need to set up a baseball card system for all of these plant managers with stats.

Sam 55:07

You'd have to start your collection early because we're seeing fewer and fewer of them.

Jeffrey 55:11

They do. They blur them out now. They don't like it. They don't like it.

Scott 55:16

Well, I think we are running up against time, at least for this particular set. Hopefully, we can see more later this month. Fingers crossed he does something else exciting that does not launch anything or test anything. I'd love to see some more Flowform machines or the like.

Jeffrey 55:34

Well, you know, where a lot of these pictures are going to get analyzed. Scott, I think I have a hunch, but please tell me on our Slack channel. You can be a member of our Slack channel, which is amazing, because it's an incredible community of people, and the research that people do in the Slack channel gets written up in, in the news, which is wonderful, and always like slightly shocking to me, because I, you know, I love our Slack channel, but it's great that other people appreciate it.

And you can get access to that by being a supporter of our podcast which is a very inexpensive five dollars a month three dollars if you're a student and thus far inflation proof and thus far inflation proof and that's at patreon.com forward slash acw podcast And with that, Sam, thanks for coming on and talking about the work we're doing together.

Sam 56:37

Yeah, thanks for having me. It's been an absolute pleasure.

Jeffrey 56:40

Scott, thanks for coming on and co-hosting with me. Always happy to be here. And listeners, thank you for listening.