- In October, North Korea claimed it had launched an underwater ballistic missile from a lake.
- It may have been a stunt, but it reflects Pyongyang’s long history of underground activity.
- This underground focus is designed to hide North Korea’s military advances from the US and its allies.
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North Korea’s recent missile tests could have borrowed from the plot of a James Bond film.
In October, North Korea claimed it had launched an underwater ballistic missile from a lake. Photos released by North Korea appeared to show one Rocket rising from a lake or reservoir.
State media reported that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un personally oversaw a series of missile tests, including a missile reportedly launched from an inland body of water in the country’s northwest.
The usefulness of an underwater-launched ICBM is debatable, but whether it was a test of actual technology or a propaganda stunt, it’s the latest in North Korea’s long obsession with hiding its weapons underground — or, in this case, under water.
Bruce Bennett, an expert on North Korea at think tank RAND Corporation, believes Pyongyang was more of a type of underwater missile silo and may actually have used a barge.
A rocket launch from a North Korean lake in a photo released Oct. 10. KCNA via Portal
“North Korea has long had a barge that is used for seaborne ballistic missile test launches when a suitable submarine was not available and the North wanted to test a submarine-launched ballistic missile,” Bennett told Insider. “Although we don’t know for sure what the North did to launch a missile from a lake, I suspect they built a similar barge and used it for launching on the lake.”
An underwater missile launcher in an inland lake has advantages. It would make planning a US and South Korean strike more difficult. The exact position of the launcher needs to be pinpointed, and then the attacker would need “a warhead that could penetrate through the atmosphere and then into the water, which would be another difficult task,” Bennett said.
But the challenges of building an underwater missile base “would be a difficult and costly endeavor,” Bennett added. North Korea would have to build the site and a launch vehicle and send a ship to lower the rocket onto it without being detected.
Also maintenance would be a nightmare. “The North would have to be able to make electrical and communications connections in the water and keep the missile in the water unless the North developed a method of pumping the silo dry,” Bennett said.
The entrance to an ‘intrusion tunnel’ under the DMZ between South and North Korea in September 2006. ERIC WISHART/AFP via Getty Images
Underwater missile sites may be a blessing and non-existent outside of North Korean propaganda, but Pyongyang has a history of underground projects, from underground factories used to build missiles and nuclear bombs to tunnels under the demilitarized zone wide enough to accommodate tanks behind them emerging South Korean lines.
The North Koreans have good reason to turn into moles. During the Korean War, UN forces used air forces to relentlessly destroy North Korean troops, positions, and supply lines.
Should war break out today, US and South Korean forces would bombard the North with precision-guided munitions, including giant Bunker Buster bombs. While the North has an enormous, albeit old, arsenal of Cold War-era artillery and tanks, it cannot win direct firepower combat with its much more technologically advanced enemies.
But what North Korea can do is dig…and dig.
His artillery is hidden in caves, from which he emerges to fire and then ducks back into cover. Its ballistic missiles, perhaps armed with nuclear warheads, are sheltered in mountain tunnels from which their mobile launchers can roll out and fire. Nuclear weapons development and test sites are shielded behind thick rocks.
A North Korean soldier in front of a tunnel at the Punggye-ri nuclear test site in May 2018. News1-Dong-A Ilbo via Getty Images
Add in tunnels for troops and civil defense, and the nation of North Korea appears to be one large underground facility, or UGF as the Pentagon calls it.
Their size and sophistication range from small tunnels only big enough for people or a few vehicles to large, complex UGFs for command and control, missiles and other strategic assets, according to the US Defense Intelligence Agency’s 2021 report about North Korean military might.
Bennett suspects Pyongyang is bluffing about underwater missile bases: “We know from history that the North occasionally falsely claims a new capability and tries to appear more capable or less vulnerable than it really is.”
But bluffing like this has worked before. North Korea — so poor and so isolated that its people have eaten weed to avoid starvation and its regime survives by selling drugs abroad and cybertheft — continues to threaten its neighbors and vowed to use artillery to bombard Seoul Sea of Fire” and the launching of dozens of missiles into nearby waters, including 23 in a single day in November.
Unlike despots in Iraq or Libya, one of the reasons why the Kim regime still exists is that the world does not know exactly how many weapons of mass destruction it has and where it keeps them. That makes an invasion or a pre-emptive strike risky, and that’s what Pyongyang wants. It may be a crazy dictatorship, but it’s not entirely irrational.
Michael Peck is a defense writer whose work has appeared in Forbes, Defense News, Foreign Policy Magazine, and other publications. He has a Masters in Political Science. Keep following him Twitter and LinkedIn.