Seoul – The atmosphere in the North Korean port city where a launch of a warship went badly last week is dark, according to local residents, while the authorities are carrying out arrests and civil servants rush to find ways to recover the 5000 tonnes.
The North Korean state media reported that several senior officials had been detained, including Hong Kil Ho, the director of the Chongjin shipyard, and Ri Hyong Son, a senior military industry in the ruling workers.
The launch of May 21 was to be a signature event for the supreme leader Kim Jong Une, reporting a progression from North Korea to the construction of a navy of blue water.
He presided over the launch when the ship switched aside after an attempted “lateral launch” on the side of the platform which left a side of the submerged shell. Just a day later, the state media pointed out his angry reaction: calling him a “serious and unacceptable accident” and a “serious criminal act”.
“People are amazed that the government has recognized failure so openly,” a resident of North Hamgyong, where Chongjin, told RFA. Like all sources of this story, the resident spoke under the guise of anonymity for security reasons.
A source from Chongjin said: “The whole city has the impression that it is in mourning.”
The opaque and often brutal political system of North Korea only adds to tension. Residents are now afraid that people involved – engineers, managers and perhaps even their families – can face serious sanctions.
“People fear that this leads to a purge,” said a second source in the province of North Hamgyong. “Kim takes the failure personally, especially when it undermines his image.”
Failure
The shipyard was once known to build ships such as Mangyongong-92 9,500 tonnes, a cargo cargo and a passenger ferry which was launched in 1971. But He has not launched large-scale ships like this for decades, according to local sources. During the reign of Kim Jong one, the court had pivoted towards the production of military assets like submarines and torpedoes.
“The shipyard was capable of building cargoes before economic collapse in the 1990s,” said Chongjin resident. “But after the economic collapse, they did not build larger ships. With the retirement of older engineers, the new generation has no experience for this type of operation. ”
After the accident, the damaged warship was covered with blue tarpaulin, visible in satellite images. Residents say that attempts to recover the ship were slow, hampered by poor infrastructure and a lack of appropriate equipment.
“There are no large cranes at the shipyard who can lift a ship of this size,” said the first source of North Hamgyong. “They could use sea cranes, but the approach road through the sea to the platform is too narrow and shallow for those who work easily.”
“It is possible to use crane ships (floating cranes), but the platform of the shipyard where the ship capsized is too narrow, which makes it extremely difficult to deploy several crane ships,” added the source. “Another problem is that the platform is not directly connected to open waters – it is deeply inside the land and can only be accessible through a narrow channel, which makes large crane ships on the site.”
Use balloons?
Satellite imagery seems to show that North Korea tries to raise the destroyer in a vertical position by attaching many balls to it, according to an American expert.
Decker Eveth, imaging analyst at the Center for Naval Analyza, a non -profit organization based in Washington, DC, compared it to a scene from a popular animated film.
“North Korea seems to try to raise their destroyer with methods inspired by the successful film of Pixar 2009. Note the many balls in the air above destroyer,” he wrote in an article on X with a satellite image of May 25 of Maxar.
In “Up”, an elderly man attaches a large number of balls to his house to have him fly in a South American desert.
Translated and additional reports by Jaewoo Park. Published by Sungwon Yang and Mat Pennington.