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Egypt Independent
14-04-2025
- Business
- Egypt Independent
North Korea is making what could be its largest, most advanced warship ever, new satellite photos show
Seoul, South Korea CNN — New satellite images show what could be North Korea's biggest warship ever – possibly more than double the size of anything in leader Kim Jong Un's naval fleet. Images taken by independent satellite providers Maxar Technologies and Planet Labs on April 6 show the ship under construction in the water at the Nampo shipyard on North Korea's west coast, about 60 kilometers (37 miles) southwest of the capital Pyongyang. Analysts say the pictures show ongoing construction of weapons and other internal systems of the ship, which is likely a guided-missile frigate (FFG) designed to carry missiles in vertical launch tubes for use against targets on land and sea. 'The FFG is approximately 140 meters (459 feet) long, making it the largest warship manufactured in North Korea,' an analysis by Joseph Bermudez Jr. and Jennifer Jun at the Center for Strategic and International Studies said. For comparison, the US Navy's Arleigh Burke-class destroyers are about 505 feet long and its under-construction Constellation-class frigates will be 496 feet long. The existence of the warship is not a surprise. The Kim regime has been engaged in a rapid modernization of its armed forces, developing a range of new weapons and testing intercontinental ballistic missiles that can reach almost anywhere in the United States. It's done that despite United Nations sanctions that have puts strict limits on its access to the materials and technology to develop those weapons. But the closer ties with Russia since the beginning of the Ukraine war could be helping North Korea overcome the UN sanctions, analysts say. Kim Duk-ki, a retired South Korean admiral, said he thinks Moscow may be providing the technology for the frigate's missile systems. Pictures of the vessel appeared in a report by state-run Korean Central Television released late last year on the ruling Workers' Party's end-of-year plenary session. The images showed leader Kim inspecting the ship's construction. An image from Korean Central Television shows leader Kim Jong Un checking the work on a new warship late last year. Korean Central TV The images in the KCTV video show the warship could have the kind of weaponry possessed by modern navies, including vertical launch cells that could be used to fire a variety of missiles. Analysts also noted the ship seems to be set up to have phased-array radar, which can track threats and targets more quickly and accurately than previously displayed North Korean capabilities. Despite those indications of advanced warfighting abilities, analysts urged caution in making assumptions. The challenge of building warships Almost any shipbuilder can get the hull and propulsion systems right, said Carl Schuster, a former US Navy captain and Hawaii-based analyst. 'However, modern warships represent an integration challenge of communications, electronics, weapons, and both electronic and acoustic sensor technologies' that is not so easily achieved, he said. In an interview with CNN in March, South Korean lawmaker Kim Byung-kee, a member of the National Assembly's Intelligence Committee, questioned whether Pyongyang has the technical ability to build an advanced warship, or the infrastructure to support it. 'Operating such a big military warship takes significant amount of budget. They not only have to build a warship, but make a team that would operate it, and it costs to operate it including the equipment and fuel. Also, one huge warship cannot go out on its own. So the question is, can North Korea afford the cost?' he said. Kim, the retired South Korean admiral, was cautious on not underestimating what the final product may look like, especially its lethality. 'If North Korea equips the new frigate with the hypersonic ballistic missile it claimed to have successfully tested in January, that will cause a game changing impact in the regional security,' the former naval officer said. After reviewing the satellite images for CNN, Schuster said it's likely a year or more of work remains before the new North Korean warship can begin sea trials. 'This ship's construction is being delayed by the lack of the superstructure, sensor and weapons systems intended for installation,' he said. North Korea's aged fleet North Korea's navy has about 400 patrol combatants and 70 submarines, according to the most recent estimate from the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) in a 2021 report. Though that's a large number of vessels, most of them are old and small. Joseph Dempsey, an analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, wrote in a January blog post that Pyongyang has only two principal surface combatants. Those Najin-class frigates – 1,600-ton warships dating to the early 1970s – are obsolete, he wrote. The DIA report said the North Korean navy would largely be reduced to coastal defense in any conflict with South Korea or the United States, both of which have vastly superior naval forces. But North Korean leader Kim has been pushing to modernize his naval fleet. It is also developing submarine-launched missiles and the subs to carry them. In September, Kim inspected the site for a new naval port. 'Now that we are soon to possess large surface warships and submarines which cannot be anchored at the existing facilities for mooring warships, the construction of a naval base for running the latest large warships has become a pressing task,' he said at the time. Yu Yong-won, a South Korean lawmaker, said the ship under construction at the Nampo yard is only one example of Kim trying to modernize his navy. A nuclear-powered submarine is under construction at a shipyard in the North Korean port of Sinpo and another frigate or destroyer is in the works in Chongjin, Yu said.
The Guardian
10-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘Straight to the game': how North Korea gets to watch Premier League football
TV viewers in North Korea have to endure more than their fair share of war films – in which there can be only one victor – news reports delivered with revolutionary gusto and breathless Kim dynasty propaganda. But even for a country as wary of outside influences as North Korea, it appears unable to resist the lure of Premier League football – the most-watched sport on the nation's TV screens. Just don't expect to see any live action, let alone Gary Lineker presenting in his underpants. Six months after the current Premier league season began, the state broadcaster, Korean Central Television (KCTV) has started broadcasting matches in January, albeit with the heavy-handed intervention of the Pyongyang regime's censors, according to the US-based website 38 North in a report on how the reclusive country's 26 million citizens get their fix of the beautiful game. Using archives of North Korean TV broadcasts received via satellite, and a database of TV programme schedules compiled by South Korea's unification ministry, the analysis covers the 2022 World Cup in Qatar and Women's Asian Cup in 2023, as well as the Premier League and the Champions League. The coverage is almost certainly a breach of copyright. North Korea does not have the rights to broadcast Premier League fixtures – an arrangement that could be a breach of international sanctions targeting the country's nuclear and ballistic missile programmes. 'How KCTV gets the footage is a mystery,' the report said. In 2022, North Korean TV broadcast matches from English, German, French, Spanish and Italian leagues, but since 2023 has opted exclusively for the Premier League, the Champions League and World Cup, according to the report. The coverage is far from comprehensive. Typically, a 90-minute match is edited down to an hour, and screen graphics in English are overlaid with ones in Korean. Other logos present on the video are blurred, probably to conceal the name of the original overseas broadcaster. At one stage, censors even masked pitch-side advertising, but has since relented. Coverage of the 2024-25 Premier League season began on 13 January with a match between Ipswich and Liverpool – 150 days after the game was held. The next broadcast, two days later, was also of a match that had been played the previous August. The broadcasts are pundit-free zones, according to one of the report's authors, Martyn Williams, a senior fellow at the Stimson Center, a thinktank that publishes 38 North. 'There is no studio,' he said. 'It's straight into the game, which carries Korean commentary from KCTV over the crowd noise. 'Most homes appear to have TV these days and KCTV is the most widely received national network, so most homes are able to watch.' KCTV shows only a fraction of the 380 Premier League matches played in a season, and those that are televised are typically repeated at least three times, the report said. Just 21 matches from the 2023-24 season were shown. And as in previous years, an incomplete schedule means it is unlikely that North Korean viewers will ever discover the destination of this year's Premier League title. While KCTV broadcasted the final stage of last year's Champions League, the matches were not shown in chronological order. There were fewer frustrations for fans during coverage of the 2022 World Cup. The state broadcaster showed, with a delay of just a few hours, all of the tournament's fixtures, with four exceptions: all three of South Korea's group matches and, possibly for technical reasons, USA v Wales. KCTV lifted its ban on the South's footballers only to show them being knocked out of the tournament by Brazil. In 2023, North Korean graphics labelled South Korea's female players 'puppets' during a match at the Asian Games in Hangzhou, China. Animosity towards the South extends to Premier League coverage, to the possible frustration of North Koreans with a soft spot for Wolverhampton Wanderers, Tottenham Hotspur and Brentford. The presence of South Korean players – Hwang Hee-chan, Son Heung-min and Kim Ji-soo, respectively – at those clubs mean they are not considered fit for consumption in the North, whose leader, Kim Jong-un, has labelled the South his country's 'number one hostile state'. Kim's frequent demonisation of the west has not prevented England's top domestic league from becoming a regular presence on TV in North Korea, a football-obsessed country with a proven pedigree in international competitions. The North Korea men's team famously reached the quarter-finals of the 1966 World Cup, via a shock victory over Italy; last year the country's female players won their third U-20 Women's World Cup. 'With propaganda making its way into almost every aspect of North Korean television, international sports coverage is one of the few moments each day when state TV is not trying to send an overt or underlying message to its viewers,' the 38 North report said. 'That may be sufficient to make it enjoyable.'
