North Korea’s Submarine Launched Missile

Jeffrey Lewis 0:08

You are listening to the Arms Control Wonk podcast, the leading podcast on arms control, disarmament, and nonproliferation. I am Dr. Jeffrey Lewis, the founding publisher of the Arms Control Wonk blog and a scholar at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey in California. Aaron Stein is on vacation, so I'm joined here in the Digital Learning Commons by two of my colleagues at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, Melissa Hanham and Dave Schmerler.

Hey, guys. Hey, what's going on? Hello. Hello. Melissa is a senior research associate at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies, and Dave is one of our graduate students.

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In May, North Korea released pictures that appear to show Kim Jong-un watching the launch of a submarine-launched ballistic missile. We thought we would do a podcast on the topic since Dave and Melissa have done a ton of open source work on trying to track the development of these programs. So let me start off by asking each of you, as you have gone through the various bits of propaganda, do you think that the program is real?

Do you think that the program is fake, or, and I think, I already know that we all think this, but, you know, how would you say it? That the program is real, but getting exaggerated.

Melissa Hanham 1:21

Yeah. I think that's appropriate. It's been photoshopped to look more elegant than it really is, both literally and spiritually. Spiritually photoshopped?

Dave Schmerler 1:31

Spiritually photoshopped. It needed more Juche, and that just wasn't captured in the camera, so...

Jeffrey 1:36

Let me start off by asking you, Melissa, I mean, one of the things that you've done that I think is really interesting is you have started the process of trying to measure and model the missile. So I wonder if you could talk a little bit about what that missile looks like to you.

Melissa 1:55

Yeah, so in the beginning, there wasn't much I could have done. It was actually Dave that opened the door for me. So KCNA released a series of images showing Kim Jong-un pointing at a missile, and it looked lovely. They pretended it came from a submarine. But Dave actually discovered it. Maybe you want to tell the story first.

Dave 2:16

I was in South Korea for a friend's wedding when the first series of videos came out, which was a set of stills. Of the launch, and I tried to access the video like seven or eight times, and I kept getting that darn blue screen that the South Korean police put up when you're trying to access North Korean things. So I had to wait like a week until I got back, and then the first thing I did when I landed was pull up the original KCNA footage, and I watched the whole thing. I noticed a lot of people were just recycling the same four images that the news outside North Korea was

Jeffrey 2:45

Yeah, I suppose it's important to get this squared away because there have been a series of releases of images and videos. And cartoons. And cartoons. Well, we'll get there. And other countries' images. And other countries' images repurposed. So walk me through this, Dave. There were the still images that were in Rodung Sinmun and KCNA.

Dave 3:11

So there is the. Talking, and then a PowerPoint slideshow of the things going off, which North Korean news does, right, right, which is really weird. But the nightly newscast shows still images, yeah. And then there was the second video, which I think was like a minute long of things just popping out of the water. There was the third video of the SLBM launching out of a tube. It was very cartoony, and And then there was the fourth video, which was a seven minute long compilation of everything altogether with him sailing out, pointing at both saluting soldiers.

And there was the first one. Or sailors. Or sailors, sorry. Who knows who they are, right? And then there was the last video, which was Kim Jong-un inspecting military sites, which had a short bit of all three of those in it.

Melissa 4:04

Anyways, all those images, all those videos, everyone's sort of focusing on the same few, including myself, which I'm ashamed of, but I've got like 110% of work to do right now. But you found one single clip.

Dave 4:18

So I noticed the boat, you know, the missile's coming out, it's coming out, and then there is a boat right next to where the missile's coming out of the water. And unless they decided they were going to play chicken with an SLBM, which I'm sure even the North Koreans are, you know, too smart for it. I thought that might be related to the TULP or underwater towed launch platform.

Jeffrey 4:38

Right. So, Dave, what you're saying is in almost every picture, the North Koreans were very careful to crop out a boat which was right next to where the launch occurred. Yeah. And it seems very unlikely that you would have a submarine and a boat that close since you would not want the submarine to run into the boat or to launch into the boat.

Exactly.

Melissa 4:57

Yeah.

Jeffrey 4:58

And so you thought that maybe, instead of it being a submarine launch, that the North Koreans may have used a towed barge, and this was the boat that was towing the barge, and they were trying to cut it out of the picture. Exactly, which is the way most people do it to begin with, right? You're not gonna, you're not gonna put a SLBM into one of your, well, it's what the Russians do, few submarines, unless you know it's gonna work. Which I guess is a good point to say that You know, there had been reports that there was a submarine visible in North Korea with launch tubes in early 2014.

But then in January and February and March and April, then I guess there were a couple of stories by Bill Gertz, not someone who loves me. Feeling is mutual. But he had gotten a couple of leaks that suggested that there had been a series of ejection tests and that some of those were from a barge. So it sort of stood to reason that this early on, you would not necessarily expect the North Koreans to be launching from a submarine.

Dave 6:00

Yeah, that and I mean, you can look at what the missile that they supposedly launched looks very similar to an older Soviet missile. The submarines that they were using or trying to retrofit to fire the missile were similar to an older Soviet missile. So the Soviets launched their early SLBMs. And it made sense for the North Koreans to kind of follow that step.

Jeffrey 6:21

Now, Melissa, you modeled the... So Dave just said it looked like an old Soviet missile, but you've actually put some numbers on that.

Melissa 6:29

Right, so the fact that Dave found this boat in one image meant that I could create kind of a fake ruler... And because we already knew where that tugboat was on Google Earth, we could take the measurement of that boat.

Jeffrey 6:43

Oh, right. There was a satellite photograph that showed Sinpo, which was the nearest naval base, and that had the submarine, the tugboat, and the barge.

Melissa 6:52

Yeah. Yeah. So all three of those things were in the port there. And so I could use the tugboat that Dave found as a kind of ruler because I could measure that on Google Earth. And then I had something to scale the missile against. So we used a free piece of software called Web Plot Digitizer, which another student, Bo Kim, has been using also to measure centrifuges.

And it's helpful because you can essentially count the number of pixels in an image. So before Dave found the boat, I had a kind of ratio of length to diameter that I was looking for, but I didn't know how big it actually was until we had the boat, and then once we measured it using the boat, then yes, it looks like an R-27.

Jeffrey 7:40

Which would be a.k.a. The SS-N-6, which is a missile that we've Been told that the North Koreans acquired and been told that the North Koreans transferred on to the Iranians, and which we think is the basis of the Musudan, which is bigger, right? It looks, yeah, a lot bigger. But this looks like it's just a repurposed SS-N-6 that's stuck into the sale of a new submarine.

Melissa 8:04

There are half a dozen caveats that come with this measurement, which I know are not fun for policymakers, but, you know, the angle... Of the launch, the angle of the camera, the heading of the ship, all of these things are going to affect the calculations a little bit. One of your commentators asked for an error analysis, and that's something that I would like to work on as soon as I get a chance to.

But especially with low resolution images like this, if you're off a pixel here, a pixel there, it can add up. So we will try to do that too.

Jeffrey 8:36

Yeah, my colleague George Herbert was trying to do an analysis of the size of the sail to see if it would be big enough to accommodate it. And it was one of those things where the answer sort of looked like yes, but if you're off by a pixel here or there, then the answer can go from yes to no.

Well, that raises naturally the next question, which I'd love to hear what you all think about because we've talked about it, but I don't know if we've ever put kind of a top-level judgment on it. I think we all think to some extent that the photographs and the images have been fooled with a little bit and that the North Korean description of what happened is maybe not entirely forthright.

Dave 9:20

Maybe a little bit, yeah.

Jeffrey 9:22

Shocked. But what do you make of the possibility that or how do you interpret the images in terms of what do you think is not real? What do you think is exaggerated?

Dave 9:37

I think I think Bermudez pointed this out as well. A lot of the smoke plumes coming out might be altered. I've been spending a lot of time using Microsoft Movie Maker, slowing down the most recent video that shows kind of the whole duration of their prop that they released to KCNA. And there are some weird things happening with shadows when it comes out of the water.

It's coming out of two different directions. That's something I'm looking at. And there's also that last scene that we were talking about earlier that looks kind of CGI'd.

Jeffrey 10:07

Well, let me ask about the two different directions, because I think one of the things that we're all trying to do is we're sorting through, now that there are so many images and so much video, it looks like there are multiple vantage points. So how many vantage points do you think there are on this launch at this point as we try to sort through?

Dave 10:27

From looking at the pictures, we have the submarine. I think we're assuming that they're using the total. Know, hypothetically underwater. So we'll count that one out. So we have the submarine, we have the tugboat, we have the boat that Kim Jong-un is on. And we also have another boat, which I think we have satellite pictures of at the dockyard.

And it's shown at the end where Kim Jong-un is looking at the submarine. In the corner, there's actually another military boat with a bunch of people standing trying to get in the boat up. Oh, that's interesting.

Jeffrey 10:59

I didn't notice that. Although we're assuming no pictures taken from the submarine itself. That's true. So what, three vantage points as many?

Dave 11:08

The GoPro on the...

Jeffrey 11:11

The GoPro on the... Selfie. Well, Melissa, so you've been looking at the video, right, to try to see if it looks fooled with or doctored. And one of the things that we did was we looked at the 2012 movie, The Country I Saw. Excellent movie.

Melissa 11:35

Yeah.

Jeffrey 11:36

I'm joking, by the way, for the record. Right, The Country I Saw is this North Korean propaganda film, and it's got reasonably fancy animations of a nuclear test and a missile launch. And we were trying to see if the animation in The Country I Saw looked like the animation in, or rather looked like some of the footage of the submarine launch.

So what did you think, Melissa? Yeah.

Melissa 12:06

Well, so North Koreans are very, very good at animation, at photoshopping. I don't know if you remember the hovercraft incident.

Jeffrey 12:18

How can I forget the hovercraft? This is an incident where the North Koreans, I guess they stamped three or four extra hovercrafts.

Melissa 12:25

But they did a fantastic... My compliments to the Photoshoppers that worked on that piece.

Dave 12:33

You might have just saved someone's life with that compliment.

Melissa 12:36

Well, I truly...

Dave 12:37

I think once it was exposed, I don't think they're...

Melissa 12:42

But, I mean, so any images... You can send a care package to the labor camp. We'd be pleased to have you come and replace Dave when he graduates. Anyways, I mean, so I suspect there's a lot of... Small things that have been done. I mean, these are important photographs. These are important photographs for political reasons. They are obviously want to tell us a particular story.

So I think probably every single image has been touched in some way or another, but I don't know if they're, if they're manipulating the photos to Put out misinformation or cover up a failure, or if it's because they want to beautify the image for aesthetic purposes or something to that effect. We, without any fancy software, can spot a few little things that are off.

But we would love to have the really fancy error-level analysis and many, many filters that are out there to truly examine them.

Jeffrey 13:44

Yeah, see, I thought you were going to tell the story, which I thought was pretty funny, where we looked at the... And the first video, there was a lot of jitter so that it looked like the camera was on a boat that was moving. And so the rocket itself was kind of blurry and it looked real. And then we have this, there's this beautiful shot from a different vantage point where there's no jitter at all.

And we really thought that it must be animated.

Dave 14:13

It looks a little video game.

Jeffrey 14:15

But then we found a real video of a Polaris launch. Yeah, that was right. That was just so clean and sharp. And so, you know, I thought we had them, but alas.

Melissa 14:31

So I'm not sure if I'm talking about the same video, which we had names for all the videos, but this is the one where they cut back and forth between the US Polaris. Oh no, that's a different video.

Dave 14:40

We're talking about the one where it goes up and you can see the label of it perfectly and there's no rotation. And just going up into the heavens as it was planned to do.

Jeffrey 14:50

And it's so clean.

Melissa 14:51

It's as clean as the... Just the hand of Kim Jong-il reaches down from heaven and just pulls it up.

Jeffrey 14:58

It was just as clean as the animation in the country I saw. But then, of course, the problem was that... So the video was just as clean as the animation in the country I saw.

Dave 15:13

But equally as clean as the American video. But equally as clean as the real American one, yeah. Conspiracy, which I won't do.

Melissa 15:19

But Dave, how old is the American video?

Dave 15:22

The American video, I think, was from the 70s or 60s, right?

Jeffrey 15:25

Yeah, it was a Polaris launch, so it was really old.

Melissa 15:27

So, I mean...

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Jeffrey 18:47

But Dave, so you, however, did find that. So this Japanese, well, this Korean group in Japan that releases all this North Korean propaganda released a little video, which they claimed to be footage of the submarine launch, but turned out was not. Why don't you say a word about that?

Dave 19:05

Like the good grad student I was, I was staying up late finishing papers at like, you know, two, three o'clock in the morning. And Twitter is, you know, constantly on my phone. And I realized people were talking about videos that came out. And I saw the video and I mean, there were some obvious markers that were very cartoony, like the submarine.

I feel like I've seen that before, but I can't attribute that at the moment. It breaking through the seal underwater. That was kind of like Gumby graphics. It was really, you know, it wasn't too well done. And then they showed two clips, two reels, one of it leaving a tube and the second of it going past the sail of the submarine.

And I stare at missile videos. All day. It's kind of a hobby of mine, and I have seen both these videos. So I spent all of 10 minutes going back and trying to find, you know, SLBM launch videos, and I'm like, oh, that was the American video. And I look at the Korean one again, I'm like, okay, they're fudging out, you know, the English on the, on the cover, just blur out all the little English, right? So the North Koreans have basically just taken an American Trident launch, blurred out all of the English writing, and then writing. They took out the the titles the one where it's going to So I'm just giving them a friendly reminder next time that they should leave the labels on.

Melissa 20:16

That guy is not invited to replace Dave.

Dave 20:19

Yeah, right? But once I saw that, it just starts getting more comical because they named their first SLBM, what was the equivalent in English as Polaris, and that was our first SLBM. And now they're using our old SLBM footage to show their SLBM footage. It's creepy.

Melissa 20:36

It's a little single white female.

Jeffrey 20:38

That movie's too old for you. Dave was like three when that movie came out. Was that like Bridget Fonda? Was that Bridget Fonda? She's like old enough to be your mom, right?

Dave 20:50

Either way, yeah, they're trolling the American historical development of an SLBM. So maybe we can take a step back and start looking back at what we did. See if that actually comes true or not.

Jeffrey 21:03

So Dave, you found one other thing, which I just, I really got a kick out of. So we noted earlier on in the podcast that it seemed like the North Koreans, with one exception, took incredible care to always Photoshop out the boat that was the tugboat that pulled the barge.

Dave 21:18

You're talking about the sleuth.

Jeffrey 21:20

Right. But then at the end of the video.

Dave 21:23

So the rocket goes off. They have the area where the tugboat would be. It's not in the frame at all. And then Kim Jong-un looks around and the guy in the green next to him, like the military official, points to something. And then Kim Jong-un looks and salutes off in the direction.

Jeffrey 21:42

So he's saluting the tugboat, who are probably the guys who really launched the missile.

Dave 21:46

That or Poseidon's out in the ocean smiling.

Jeffrey 21:52

So if we back up, I mean, it seems like certainly some of the images have been photoshopped. And the pro-North Korean group in Japan was not above... Relabeling American videos and trying to present it as the SLBM test. And we're not sure if some of the footage is animation or not. But as weird as it sounds, that doesn't mean that the program is fake, right?

Dave 22:23

No, not at all. I think it's just about where North Koreans want the rest of the world to perceive their program as at. The program is certainly real. I mean, we have the hard pictures from the satellites that show the TULP, that show the new submarine, that show the rocket test stand or something like that. It's not about the program being fake or not, because the program really does exist.

It's just where the program is at now, I think, is where the real debate is.

Melissa 22:50

So it's so polished, though, it makes me wonder if they're crafting this to be Kim Jong-un's legacy, right? So his dad had the nuclear tests and the initial missile tests, but this SLBM program, maybe that's his. We've even read these stories where the scientists working on the submarine had to basically chase his propagandists out of the building.

And I was on Twitter being like, no!

Dave 23:15

Oh, release the video. I feed my kids with these videos, right?

Melissa 23:20

But the fact that they are literally, the thing that's getting leaked out of North Korea is that the scientists have to chase Kim Jong-un's propagandists out of the building with their video cameras. I don't know. I think maybe a lot of the embellishments that are happening are cosmetic because this is going to go down in history as Kim Jong-un's legacy.

Jeffrey 23:40

Yeah, I found that really interesting because early on, there was clearly a lot of secrecy associated with the program. So when there had been this announcement of the existence, right, that Bill Gertz gets the story, that the U.S. intelligence community has a satellite picture that shows a North Korean submarine with a launch tube in the sail, a bunch of us wanted to figure out, like, well...

Where would that be? And could we buy the same picture? And so Sean O'Connor at Janes and I found there was this visit that Kim Jong-un made to an unnamed shipyard in late 2014. And we were kind of like, oh, that's interesting, right? They show him at the shipyard and they show him touring this building, but they don't tell you where the shipyard is and they don't tell you why he's visiting.

And that naturally got us really interested. And because he also on that same day visited a martyr cemetery, we were able to figure out the cemetery. Geolocate that, and then infer from that that he had been at Sinpo, which it turns out is where this program was based. And we were able to then, using the inside of the building and the windows and the rail tracks going into the building... You were able to pinpoint where he was standing in the building, which is new.

Right. That's great. That's awesome. And then Sean and I blew it. Mm-hmm. Because because we found the building and we had the place and Joe Bermudez had the good sense to look like a hundred meters away. And there's like a giant test stand there for the submarine launch ballistic missile. And so, you know, it struck me that he obviously cared enough about.

To go look at the site, but that they didn't want to reveal what it was.

Dave 25:26

Yeah, I'm curious to see if they're going to start putting curtains behind Kim Jong-un when he goes on the inside of buildings now, because I know you're responsible for the nice green panel on the outside.

Jeffrey 25:35

Yeah, this is Dave teasing me about the fact that now every time Kim Jong-un goes to an outside rocket launch, they obscure his location because we've been geolocating him.

Melissa 25:43

Yeah, they're going to have to black out all the windows. That's my job. Look, Dave.

Jeffrey 25:48

If the old people like me don't make it harder for the young people like you, what other legacy can we give you? An SLBM program.

Melissa 25:59

Monterey's first SLBM program.

Jeffrey 26:01

But that was a really long winded way of saying it doesn't surprise me that there are these reports that people are unhappy because the early North Korean propaganda about the program was really quite subdued. Yeah. But even then, it wasn't subdued enough, right? We were able to kind of quickly surface what it was about. I also think it's weird.

What do you guys think about this? In this weird way, if the North Koreans had never announced this program, if they had never done the propaganda, and all we had were the satellite photographs showing the test stand and the barge.

Dave 26:31

We would arguably know a lot less, I think, about the program than actually with the PR piece that I put up.

Jeffrey 26:37

Yeah, okay, so that's interesting, because what I would have asked about is... People would believe it more, though, right? I mean, there's this funny effect of...

Melissa 26:47

I don't know, because it could go the other way. It could be like the moon landing where it was filmed in the basement of the White House or something like that, right? You need enough ties to reality where people can confirm it, that these boats were actually here, that Kim Jong-un was actually here.

Dave 27:03

I think if they stuck with the original photos... And left it at that without trying to put videos out there because they felt it was nicer, then it would have been more believable. But once they kind of, you know...

Melissa 27:14

If they showed us the tugboat, if they showed us the platform, we'd been like, yes, this is an SLBM program. It acts exactly the same way as all the other SLBM programs. See, that's funny.

Jeffrey 27:22

I have exactly the opposite. The North Koreans are such liars. That if they had responded to the claims of like, oh, look, you have a test stand and a submarine with a tube and a submersible barge, you have an SLBM program. If the North Koreans had said, no, we don't, everyone would have been like, oh, my God, they do.

But it's only when the North Koreans tried to take credit for it and were like, look, we have an SLBM program. People are like, ah, you're liars.

Dave 27:46

They could have just stayed away from the video. You know, question the credibility that they had? Question mark?

Melissa 27:54

Although that did come out through that. That was not them.

Jeffrey 27:56

Well, I know, but still. It was them indirectly, right? Through the... How do you say that? Is it... Or means a kitty? Yeah, I can't.

Dave 28:03

Or means a woody. You speak Korean better than I do.

Jeffrey 28:07

Well, that's right. Dave is a Korean speaker. So, Dave, how do you pronounce that word? I have to see it in front of me. Give me a minute. Well, it wouldn't be an Arms Control Wong podcast if we didn't massacre a foreign language. Yeah, that's one of our specialties.

Melissa 28:22

Well, so, and I don't fully understand the relationship between them, but it's possible someone got reprimanded for that.

Dave 28:29

Every night they post horrible things about America and the South Korean president.

Melissa 28:33

Well, these are the same guys that fake bombed Manhattan, right?

Dave 28:38

Uri minzo kiri. Or uri minzo kiri. That's what I said. Maybe. I think there's a Zo in Korean. No, it'd be Japanese. It'd be Uri Minso Kiri. That'd be Japanese. Thank you, Dave. You're welcome.

Jeffrey 28:55

Okay, well, so if we then wrap up, what do we think... Where do we think the program is headed? I mean, I presume from our conversation, both here and offline, we all sort of agree that the program is real. The North Koreans are eager to embellish and exaggerate it. But but at the end of the day, there is a launch stand.

There is a submersible barge. They are doing pop up tests. And I should note, it's not unusual to do a pop-up test where the missile flies for a very short period of time, which is what's being alleged. That's a normal thing that the United States did with its first few Polaris tests. So what do we think, what are you looking forward to next?

Melissa 29:37

What do you think we're going to see? I would do more tests. However, I mean, if we look at their... You know, their regular missile tests that they just do so few. They're different than other countries. They don't test on the same schedule as a Russia or a China.

Dave 29:55

This is a big break for missiles, I think, specifically devoted directly to military use and, let's say, compared to I say that loosely. They really don't show a lot of videos of the missiles that they launch for military uses. We get a couple of scud launches and that's really about it. So showing the SLBM, I hope they show us, I mean, I don't want them to test more.

Kind of imply that I want their program to get better, but I would love to see more videos. I want to see more videos of like, you know, the Musudan or the K-08 or, you know, even more K-02s. That would be fun.

Melissa 30:32

Somehow, weirdly, it makes me more suspicious of the Musudan program, too. They're giving us videos and animations and stills of all these other programs.

Jeffrey 30:41

Yeah, but why can't they... You guys can't fit that thing in a submarine? I don't think they can. Yeah, it would be pretty big, right? So, but I mean, are we expecting... I guess my fundamental question is, are we expecting a full flight test? We've had ejection tests where the missile then burns a short period of time.

Are we expecting them to actually fly the thing either from land?

Dave 31:02

Or from a submarine? Don't they pull most of their flight tests anyways? The ones that don't go over Japan? They pull the range on it, so it's flying a little bit short. I wouldn't be too surprised if they tried launching something from Just across the sea. Mostly, I think we're going to get a flight test.

Melissa 31:22

I mean, I think there'll be more engine tests, more land tests. And eventually, though, if this is really like the feather in Kim Jong-un's cap, then they're going to have to show us with the submarine, probably, which is kind of scary. If it wasn't such a crappy submarine.

Dave 31:37

It'd be interesting to see if they tried masking an SLBM test and a Scud test in the same direction. So they fire a couple Scuds out in the same direction towards Japan, because that's generally the direction they launch them. And somewhere in between there, they launch the SLBM, they pull the range short, and they have

Melissa 31:52

That would be a good way to bury it if they wanted to.

Dave 31:54

I probably shouldn't have said that. I don't want to give them any ideas.

Melissa 31:56

Yeah, what are you doing, Dave?

Dave 31:57

You're making your own one.

Melissa 32:00

I don't know. I kind of think they want us to see this. I mean, they wouldn't do such beautiful Photoshopping if they really didn't want us to look at these.

Jeffrey 32:08

All right. Well, that's been super interesting. Dave, Melissa, thanks so much for popping down here to the DLC and talking about DPRK SLBMs. Is that enough acronyms?

Dave 32:22

I think so.

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Jeffrey 32:27

And I want to thank you all for listening. And remember, if you like the podcast, go ahead on to iTunes and leave us a positive review. Okay. Thanks for listening. Bye.