North Korea’s weapons are killing Ukrainians: after examining these missiles, experts were stunned | Business

As the BBC writes, when on January 2 When Chrystyna Kimachuk, a young Ukrainian weapons inspector, received a report that an unusual-looking missile had landed on a building in Kharkiv, she desperately wanted to investigate.

As she began taking apart and photographing every detail, including screws and computer chips smaller than her fingernail, the weapons expert knew almost immediately that it was not a Russian missile. But her task was to prove it.

Hiding among metal and fluttering wires, Mr. Kimachuk noticed a tiny symbol of the Korean alphabet. Then she encountered an even more telling detail. Some parts of the hull were stamped with the number 112. This corresponds to the year 2023 in the North Korean calendar. She realized that she was looking at the first hard evidence that North Korean weapons were used to attack her country, writes the BBC.

Uses Western technology

Ukraine’s military says Russia has fired dozens of North Korean missiles into its territory since then. They killed at least 24 people and injured more than 70.

Although it has recently been said that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is preparing to start a nuclear war, North Korea currently poses a greater threat – it can inflame ongoing wars and promote global instability, writes the BBC.

Mr. Kimachuk works for Conflict Armament Research (CAR), an organization that finds weapons used during the war to find out how they were made.

But it wasn’t until they finished photographing the rocket wreckage and her team analyzed hundreds of its components that the most startling discovery came to light. The latest foreign technologies were used in it.

Most electronic parts have been made in the US and Europe in the last few years. There was even a US computer chip made in 2023. march This meant that North Korea illegally acquired vital weapons components, smuggled them into the country, assembled the missile and secretly shipped it to Russia, where it was transported to the front line and launched. And all this happened within a few months.

“The most surprising thing is that, despite nearly two decades of severe sanctions, North Korea is still able to get everything it needs to make weapons, and it’s doing it incredibly quickly,” said CAR Deputy Director Damien Spleeters.

Most electronic parts have been made in the US and Europe in the last few years.

In London, North Korea expert Joseph Byrne of the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), a defense think tank, was also stunned.

“I never thought North Korea’s ballistic missiles would be used to kill people on European soil,” he said. The RUSI team has been monitoring North Korea’s arms shipments to Russia since Kim Jong Un met Vladimir Putin in Russia last September in what is believed to be an arms deal.

Using satellite images, they were able to track four Russian cargo ships going back and forth between North Korea and a Russian military port, loaded with hundreds of containers at a time.

The quality is not the best, but it is cheap

In total, RUSI estimates that 7,000 containers were sent, filled with more than a million rounds of ammunition and Grad missiles, the kind that can be fired in large volleys from trucks. Their assessments are supported by intelligence from the US, UK and South Korea, although Russia and North Korea deny the trade.

“These shells and missiles are among the most in-demand items in the world and allow Russia to continue pounding Ukrainian cities at a time when the US and Europe are at odds over what weapons to contribute,” Mr Byrne said.

The most surprising thing is that, despite nearly two decades of severe sanctions, North Korea still manages to get everything it needs to make weapons.

But it is the arrival of ballistic missiles on the battlefield that worries Mr. Byrne and his colleagues the most because of what they reveal about North Korea’s weapons program.

Since the 1980s, North Korea has sold its weapons abroad, mostly to countries in North Africa and the Middle East, including Libya, Syria and Iran. These were usually old, disreputable Soviet-type missiles. There is evidence that Hamas fighters during October 7 last year. the attack likely used some of Pyongyang’s old grenades.

However, on January 2 the launched missile that Mr Kimachuk dismantled appeared to be Pyongyang’s most sophisticated short-range missile, the Hwasong 11, which can travel up to 700km.

Although the Ukrainians have downplayed their accuracy, Dr. Jeffrey Lewis, an expert on North Korean weapons and nonproliferation at the Middlebury Institute for International Studies, says they are not much worse than Russian missiles.

The advantage of these rockets is that they are very cheap, explained Dr. Lewis. This means that more of them can be bought and launched in the hope of overcoming anti-aircraft defenses, which is exactly what the Russians appear to be doing.

Therefore, the question arises as to how many such missiles North Korea can produce.

Dr. Lewis, who has studied North Korea’s factories via satellite, believes they can produce several hundred missiles a year.

Many of the computer chips that are an integral part of modern weapons that guide them through the air to their intended targets are the same chips that power our phones, washing machines and cars, Spleeters explained. Therefore, North Korea receives them by bypassing sanctions through fake companies established in Hong Kong or Asian countries.