The Marmot’s Hole

Despite the fact that North Korea has moved quite quickly (in North Korean time) to explain what in God’s good name blew up in northern Ryanggang Province last Thursday, questions still remain. A lot of them, actually. Allow me to go through some of them.

Firstly, would you trust a North Korean explanation conveyed to you by a crew that looked like this?
(FYI, that’s a picture of the British delegation on visit to Pyongyang, taken right after they arrived at Pyongyang Airport)

On a more serious note, the Korea Times has a run down of some of the skepticism being voiced by experts in Seoul. Stuff like this:

“We should wait and see the whole picture of this incident before making any conclusions,” said Yu Suk-ryul, professor emeritus at the Institute of Foreign Affair and National Security (IFANS).

Yu said Pyongyang might be seeking to minimize speculation over the explosion or save itself from embarrassment if a military-related accident had occurred.

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Yu of IFANS suggested the blast may have been an accident at an underground munitions depot in the mountainous region, which is dotted with military facilities. “Chemical materials could have exploded,” he said.

Given the timing of the incident _ during the early morning of the Sept. 9 anniversary of the communist nation’s foundation _ anti-government terrorism was another possibility, Yu said.

“September 9 is an important day in the North. Maybe an underground group created the explosion to express discontent toward the North Korean leadership,” he explained.

Da’ Chosun, meanwhile, quoted another South Korean government official as saying:

A South Korean government official said, ???There are over 6,000 hydroelectric power station under construction in the country, so the North?????s claim may be true,???? but added, ???I am suspicious, however, as to why the North had to blow up such a large amount of ammunition.???? Dam experts say that the region of the explosion is a mountainous area with little rainfall, which is an inadequate choice for a dam site.

The Chosun also inquired as to whether our friendly neighbors to the north might be hiding something.

The Gyeongyang Shinmun (Korean) raises some other suspicious points. Firstly, according to the government’s understand on the incident, the explosion took place at around midnight Sept. 8. Now, why in the world would the North Koreans, who are short of electrical power as it is, conduct major demolition work at night? And the power of the explosion? More explanation from the North would be helpful at this point. According to experts, it’s simply nonsense that anyone would conduct dangerous demolition work of that sort at night. Dr. Baek Gyeong-oh of Seoul National University’s Civil Engineering Department’s Hydro-engineering Research Institute said, “As I know, in normal hydroelectric power plant construction, there are no demolition works that are accompanied by the kind of shock that occurred with this incident.” He also said that the veracity of the explanation itself was a bit weak. He wondered whether it would really be necessary to blow up a mountain, given the character of hydroelectric power plant construction, which makes use of geographic features like mountains and valleys as much as possible.

The article also pointed out that a defector who had been to the region said the river in question — the Huchang River — is about as small as the Jungnang Stream in Seoul, and there wasn’t anywhere where one would need massive demolition works. Accordingly, experts cited by the paper said the possibility still existed that the explosion was the result of a train or missile accident.

The Kukmin Ilbo (Korean) raises even more questions. We know for a fact that the North Koreans were building a hydroelectric power station in Ryanggang Province; on May 7, they broke ground on the Samsu Hydroelectric Power Station. Moreover, defectors said that in the early 1990s, the North Koreans had conducted a massive demolition project that pretty much blew an entire mountain into the sky, creating a big cloud (among other things, I’d imagine). This would lend credence to Foreign Minister Paek’s explanation. On the other hand, things sound a bit strange. Defectors said there were no rivers in Ryanggang Province that would require a demolition project of the magnitude presumed by South Korean authorities. Moreover, Samsu Hydroelectric Plant is located in Samsu County, which is 100km away from Kim Hyong-jik County, the presumed site of the explosion. Moreover, according to the KCNA, the Samsu plant would use the waters of the Hochon and Unchong rivers; the river that flows through Kim Hyong-jik Country is the afore mentioned Huchang River.

The paper pointed out that some are suggesting that the North Koreans rushed out an excuse to put out the flames after foreign media started speculating that the explosion might have been a nuclear test or the work of anti-government forces. Also of note, a high-ranking National Security Council (NSC) official said that while it was significant that North Korea admitted that there was an explosion, more confirmation of the North’s explanation was required. The paper noted, however, that the government was taking a caution approach to this all as to avoid causing friction in intra-Korean relations. Cheong Wa Dae spokesperson Kim Jong-min said that the government’s official position concerning the explosion would by announced through NSC standing committee chairman cum Unification Minister Chung Dong-young.

What do I think? Well, hard to say. I mean, yeah, it sounds like complete nonsense that the North Koreans would blow up a whole mountain in the middle of the night just to build a dam. Moreover, it seems like the area in question isn’t exactly a place you’d put a dam, and why would you blow up a mountain in building a dam, anyway?

On the other hand, you’re dealing with North Korea here — if North Korea had made it a habit of doing things that made sense, it wouldn’t be the starving, dirt-poor mess of a country today that we’ve all come to know and love. This is a nation that built a 105-floor tourist hotel in the middle of Pyongyang, the capital city of a country that gets only 130,000 foreign tourists a year, and many (if not most) are South Koreans heading to the Geumgang Mountains on the east coast. What I’m saying is that just because something makes absolutely no fucking sense whatsoever doesn’t necessarily rule it out in North Korea’s case; in fact, one could argue that absurd resource management (like building a dam where it shouldn’t, when it shouldn’t, using methods it shouldn’t) would simply be consistent with North Korean decision making. So who knows… maybe the Foreign Minister was telling the truth, maybe he wasn’t. Perhaps North Korea is retaliating for the Koguryo issue by trying to outdo China’s Three Gorges Dam — they just need to build the gorge first. Personally, I’m of the opinion that a mountain did in fact get blown up, but it was a mountain with an ammo depot or munitions factory in it. That’s more of a gut instinct rather than anything based on any serious analysis of news reports I’m reading, however, so draw your own conclusions.

UPDATE: Budaechigae sent me this satellite photo taken from Sept. 11 — notice the smoke rising up from the explosion site. I’m not an expert on these things, but that would seem to be the result of a very large firecracker.

Budaechigae also points to a Yonhap piece that tells us why the North Koreans took so long to tell us what happened:

SEOUL, Sept. 13 (Yonhap) — North Korea did not give an earlier explanation of last week’s huge explosion in the country because “all foreign journalists are liars,” Britain’s BBC television network quoted the North’s foreign minister as saying on Monday.

North Koreans better be careful — keep talking like that, and soon people might think they’re starting to sound like Cheong Wa Dae.