| Submit your comments on this article |
| Korea |
| NorK Arms Developments - 2 Article Set from WaPo |
| 2003-08-17 |
| First Article: On North Korean Freighter, a Hidden Missile Factory By Joby Warrick Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, August 14, 2003 NEW DELHI -- Tae Min Hun, the dour captain of the North Korean freighter Kuwolsan, glared icily from the bridge as tempers around him soared in the midday heat. On June 30, 1999, as customs agents in India’s northwestern port city of Kandla waited impatiently to board the vessel, Tae received urgent instructions from Pyongyang: At all cost, let no one open the cargo boxes. The Indians tried to look anyway, and a melee erupted. Tae and his crew rained blows on inspectors and barricaded the doors with their bodies, according to witness accounts and video footage of the encounter. A few agents who managed to slip into the cargo bay were horrified to find North Koreans sealing the hatches, trapping them inside. When the ship’s doors were finally reopened at gunpoint, the reason for the extreme secrecy became clear. Hidden inside wooden crates marked "water refinement equipment" was an assembly line for ballistic missiles: tips of nose cones, sheet metal for rocket frames, machine tools, guidance systems and, in smaller crates, ream upon ream of engineers’ drawings labeled "Scud B" and "Scud C." The intended recipient of the cargo, according to U.S. intelligence officials, was Libya. "In the past we had seen missiles or engine parts, but here was an entire assembly line for missiles offered for sale," said an Indian government official familiar with the discovery. "This was a complete technology transfer." More... Second Article: N. Korea Shops Stealthily for Nuclear Arms Gear Front Companies Step Up Efforts in European Market By Joby Warrick Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, August 15, 2003 MUNICH -- The French cargo ship Ville de Virgo was already running a day late when it steamed into Hamburg harbor on April 3, its stadium-size deck stacked 50 feet high with cargo containers bound for Asia. At the dock, harried German customs agents skimmed quickly through a fat manifest that included the usual Asia-bound staples -- fertilizer, bulk chemicals, cheeses. A last-minute addition, 214 ultra-strong aluminum pipes purchased by China’s Shenyang Aircraft Corp., was one of the final items cleared before the 40,000-ton ship fired its engines again and headed to Asia. But within hours after the ship departed, the story of the manifest began to unravel. German intelligence officials discovered that the aluminum was destined not for China but for North Korea. The intended use of the pipes, they concluded, was not aircraft production, but the making of nuclear weapons. On April 12, in a dramatic but little-noticed intervention, French and German authorities tracked the ship to the eastern Mediterranean and seized the pipes. German police arrested the owner of a small export company and uncovered a broader scheme to acquire as many as 2,000 such pipes. That much aluminum in North Korean hands, investigators concluded, could have yielded as many as 3,500 gas centrifuges for enriching uranium. "The intentions were clearly nuclear," said a Western diplomat familiar with the investigation. "The result could have been several bombs’ worth of weapons-grade uranium in a year." More... Very informative - and I hate to say startling, since we’ve come to expect the worst from the NorKs, but it is for their sheer audacity. |
| Posted by:.com |
| #1 Aluminum tubes? Gee, now where have I heard about aluminum tubes? (scratches head) Nope, can't think of it, unless you mean those tubes the Iraqis were using for "rocket bodies". Maybe the NK were going to make some rockets. You could ask them. |
| Posted by: Steve 2003-8-17 8:22:50 PM |