Despite its economic plight, North Korea has bought $400 million worth of second-hand fighter jets, submarine parts and other weapons in the past five years, South Korea’s Defense Ministry said Thursday. The communist state exported at least $110 million worth of Scud-type missiles and missile parts to Iraq, Yemen, Iran, Pakistan and Syria over the same period, said the ministry in a report to the National Assembly.
Never know when a ship carrying Scuds will run into an errant Silkworm. Wotta shame that would be.
The United States has designated North Korea as a top proliferator of missile technology. Missiles sales provide the country with badly needed cash, which possibly finances its known self-confessed suspected development of nuclear weapons. According to Defense Ministry data, North Korea purchased an unspecified number of second-hand MiG fight jets and parts, armored vehicles, submarine parts, helicopters, tank and ship engines, anti-airplane guns, ammunition, radar and communications equipment.
Second-hand MiG jets — I’d love to see the maintenance logs on those.
The weapons originated in Russia, China, Germany, Slovakia, Austria, Belarus and Japan, the ministry said.
Japan? JAPAN? What the ...
North Korea sold $60 million worth of Scud missiles and missile parts to Yemen, Syria, Iran and Iraq last year. It also sold Yemen, Pakistan and Syria a combined $30 million in missile technology in 1999 and $20 million in 2001, it said. Last December, a shipment of North Korean Scud missiles bound for Yemen was briefly stopped in the Arabian Sea as a U.S. warning against the North’s role in missile proliferation.
I’m sure Saddam has a bunch of left-over Silkworms. We ought to try them out sometime. Maybe they CAN hit the broadside of a North Korean freighter carrying Scuds barn. |