A day after an embarrassing mishap during a launch ceremony attended by dictator Kim Jong Un, North Korean authorities are trying to right the 5,000-ton frigate. The warship rolled over and partially submerged after a premature slide into the water at the Chongjin Shipyard. You can read more about the incident that Kim called “a criminal act” in our initial coverage here.
New satellite imagery obtained by The War Zone shows the unnamed vessel, the second in the Choi Hyun class of frigates, still covered with blue tarps, but now there are two steel cables connecting it to a shipyard dock.
“The cables are likely for temporary mooring, tensioning, and stabilizing in order to prevent further movement or rotation and ensure structural safety,” Jennifer Jun, Associate Fellow for Imagery Analysis at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), told us. “North Korea mentioned that they need to pump up seawater from the flooded chamber, which will change the balance of the vessel as well and requires some sort of stabilizing support.” You can read all about the heavily armed class of frigates in our previous detailed analysis and follow-up report.
“Experts estimated that it will take two or three days to keep the balance of the warship by pumping up the seawater from the flooded chamber and making the bow leave the slipway and 10-odd days to restore the warship’s side,” the official North Korean KCNA News Agency reported on Friday.
North Korean officials also expressed optimism about the ship’s condition.
“Detailed underwater and internal inspection of the warship confirmed that, unlike the initial announcement, there were no holes made at the warship’s bottom, the hull starboard was scratched and a certain amount of seawater flowed into the stern section through the rescue channel,” the officials claimed. “The extent of damage to the warship is not serious and the result of the flooding process immediately after the accident is only information necessary to take practical rehabilitation measures. The above-said data have no connection with the cause of the accident and the identification of its responsibility.”
The War Zone cannot independently verify North Korea’s claims about the ship’s condition, though it is not surprising that they would try to downplay the damage. A Washington-based think tank that closely follows North Korean shipbuilding questioned Pyongyang’s stated timeline for recovery.
While “too early to say definitively without being on the ground…I do have some skepticism about the 10-day period estimate, given that the vessel is heavily tilted and partially submerged,” Jun explained. “We also know that the vessel has been partially flooded, and the slipway infrastructure was likely damaged. Even if North Korea manages to right the vessel within the ‘10-odd days,’ restoring its original capabilities will almost certainly take longer. I’d also be remiss not to mention that given the political stakes, those responsible for reporting this to Kim have strong incentives to downplay the extent of the damage.”
As we noted in our previous coverage, the accident unfolded as the frigate was side-launched from its quay, in a new development for North Korea, which has previously used slipways to put large naval vessels into the water stern-first. Beyond Parallel, a project within CSIS, offered a detailed analysis of what could have happened, based on satellite imagery collected May 22. You can read more about that here.
Jun on Friday told us that the new imagery does not change CSIS’s assessment of what caused the ship to capsize.
“The new images from Maxar and Planet from today do not change our analysis at this point,” she explained. “We see the recovery operation still underway, with more (small) support vessels employed to support it. The stern is still in the water and the vessel does not seem to have moved since yesterday’s image.”
In addition to downplaying the extent of the damage, North Korean officials also said an investigation was underway into what happened.
“The Party Central Military Commission instructed the investigation group to investigate and expose the cause of the accident, which should never occur and could not be tolerated, and those responsible for it,” KCNA News Agency reported on Friday. “No matter how good the state of the warship is, the fact that the accident is an unpardonable criminal act remains unchanged, and those responsible for it can never evade their responsibility for the crime. Regarding this accident as a serious matter is not because of the damage to the warship or economic loss. The aim of doing so is to deal a telling blow to incautiousness, irresponsibility and unscientific empiricist attitude prevailing in any field and to sound an alarm bell.”
As part of the investigation, Hong Kil Ho, manager of the Chongjin Shipyard, “was summoned to the law-enforcement organ on May 22.”
After the incident, North Korea made the highly unusual move of announcing what happened, including comments from Kim, in an apparent effort to control the narrative.
“Kim Jong Un made [a] stern assessment, saying that it was a serious accident and criminal act caused by absolute carelessness, irresponsibility … and could not be tolerated,” KCNA reported yesterday.
Kim said that the officials found responsible would be “dealt with at the plenary meeting of the Party Central Committee” in June. This is a high-level meeting of North Korea’s ruling Workers’ Party.
At the same time, Kim called for the frigate to be restored before next month’s meeting.
As with the North Korean assessment about the timeline for the ship’s recovery, that claim is extremely dubious given that repairs are likely to be extensive.
With the availability of satellite imagery, it will be hard for North Korea to hide the material state of the vessel, as well as the progress of the recovery and restoration efforts, even with the bizarre attempt to use blue tarps to cover it up. We will continue to keep a close eye on the developments.
Contact the author: howard@thewarzone.com