[Yang Nak-gyu's Defence Club] North Korean Weapons Flowing to Hamas

North Korea has supplied weapons to the Palestine Liberation Organization since 1970
Subsequent accidental detonations during arms smuggling... Diversification of weapon types

Palestinian armed faction Hamas has been spotted possessing North Korean-made weapons, drawing attention. Arms trade between Hamas and North Korea was first revealed in 2009, and it appears these weapons are currently being used for attacks against Israel.

[Image source=Yonhap News]

According to the US-based Radio Free Asia (RFA) on the 10th, a military specialist blogger named ‘War Noir’ claimed on his social media (SNS) that "one of the Hamas fighters can be seen holding an ‘F-7 high-explosive fragmentation rocket’ produced in North Korea" in videos of Hamas members.

Despite UN Security Council sanctions against North Korea, the country has continued arms trade and military cooperation with anti-American countries in the Middle East and Africa. Armed groups that surge whenever the Middle East and African situations become unstable have been major customers of North Korea.

Since the 1970s, North Korea is known to have supplied weapons to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and others. Yasser Arafat, the PLO chairman, reportedly visited North Korea during his tenure, and PLO members were trained in North Korea.

In 2009, a cargo plane carrying 35 tons of weapons including surface-to-surface missiles and rocket-propelled grenades attempted an emergency landing at Bangkok airport but was detained. Subsequent investigations revealed the plane’s destination was Iran, which was attempting to smuggle weapons to the Lebanese armed faction Hezbollah and Hamas.

In 2010, the Israeli Foreign Minister exposed that North Korea tried to sell 122mm rockets, rocket-propelled grenades, and other small arms to Hamas and Hezbollah via Thailand. Since then, after the ‘8-day conflict’ with Israel in November 2012, Hamas has diversified its weapon types and increased its stockpile with help from North Korea and others. It is currently known to possess five types of rockets and missiles including the ‘Qassam’ with a range under 16 km, the ‘122mm Katyushas’ with a range of about 48 km, as well as the ‘M-75’ and ‘M0302’. Among these are long-range rockets capable of reaching Israeli cities such as Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. The Israeli military estimates Hamas’s rocket and mortar stockpile to be around 10,000 units. In 2017, the Israeli military intelligence site ‘Debka File’ claimed North Korea smuggled over 1,500 ‘Bulsae-2’ anti-tank missiles. The recently detected F-7 is a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) launcher, which RFA reported has been widely exported to the Middle East.

Israeli military officials believe that tunnels within the Gaza Strip were constructed by Hamas based on advice from North Korean experts. North Korea is known as one of the countries with the most sophisticated tunnel construction technology, having built tunnels under the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) with South Korea. Hamas uses these tunnels to move weapons undetected by Israeli surveillance or to launch attacks against Israel.

Israel has declared a temporary ceasefire mediated by the UN and others but stated it will not stop operations to destroy Hamas’s tunnels.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.