Free Republic

North Korea has developed a new type of midget submarine fitted with torpedo launch tubes, allowing it to attack South Korea warships more easily, a report said Tuesday. Satellite images of a naval base in the North's southwestern city of Nampo, published by JoongAng Ilbo newspaper, show what appears to be a 17-metre-long (56-feet) submarine with a tube-like structure attached to its top. "We have concluded that it is a torpedo launch tube," the paper quoted an unidentified Seoul intelligence source as saying. The paper said the new Daedong-B midget submarine moves faster than larger submarines and is harder for...

A North Korea submarine crew member has gone public for the first time to disclose details of Pyongyang's submarine operations. Lee Kwang Soo, 46, is the sole crew member remaining from the captured North Korean Sango class submarine that ran aground on a South Korean beach during an espionage mission in September 1996. North Korean submarine captured by South Korea in 1996. Lee broke his silence after the international investigation revealed Pyongyang’s role in the torpedo attack against the South Korean ship Cheonan. "I have seen 130-ton Yeoneo class submarines several times," he explained, refuting the North Korean claim to...

The South Korean Navy fired warning shots Saturday night after two North Korean patrol boats crossed into South Korean waters, state media said. The two North Korean patrol boats separately crossed a maritime border in the Yellow Sea. One retreated after receiving a warning communication from the South Korean Navy, and the other retreated after two rounds of warning shots were fired, Seoul's Joint Chiefs of Staff told the state-run Yonhap news agency. Tensions between the two nations have run high since the mysterious sinking of a South Korean warship in the border area on March 26. Fifty-eight men escaped...

High-ranking North Korean defector Hwang Jang-Yop said it was "obvious" the communist regime's ruler Kim Jong-Il masterminded the blast of the recent South Korean warship that left 40 dead and six missing. Hwang, who was a secretary of the North's ruling Workers' Party in charge of foreign policy when he took asylum in South Korea in 1997, said Kim wanted to trigger chaos in South Korea and shake its economy by blasting a warship. "North Korea has always been a terrorist nation. The regime launches terror attacks on its own people as well as foreigners," Hwang said in a newspaper...

Military officials and experts believe that if a North Korean torpedo was involved in the sinking of the South Korean Navy corvette Cheonan, it was probably launched from a 325-ton Shark-class submarine. The sub ranks between a full-blown submarine and a mini-sub in terms of size. South Korean military intelligence are reportedly focusing on the fact that one or two Shark-class submarines from a submarine base in Cape Bipagot, South Hwanghae Province are unaccounted for during the time of the Cheonan's sinking. The Bipagot submarine base is around 80 km from Baeknyeong Island. Shark-class submarines can travel at speeds of...