North Korean leader Kim Jong Un directly ordered the Dec. 19 release of reconnaissance satellite photos of downtown Seoul taken the previous day, Daily NK has learned.
Kim seemingly aimed to display North Korea’s reconnaissance prowess and promote internal unity, while at the same time cultivating an image of a supreme leader in direct charge of a militarily powerful country.
According to a high-ranking source in North Korea on Monday, Kim met with and directly congratulated leading officials of the National Aerospace Development Administration (NADA) on Dec. 18, the same day the North Korean media reported a test of a reconnaissance satellite under development.
At the meeting, Kim called the test “a big advance that can bring down the enemies’ strongholds,” and that “we need to show them how scarily [well] we are developing.”
The source said Kim ordered the release of the satellite photo taken of Seoul to show off the country’s reconnaissance capabilities.
Kim also reportedly recalled an anecdote related to the development of tractors during the Kim Il Sung era.
In the 1950s, the Soviet Union had formed a military alliance with other socialist nations, the Warsaw Pact, and an economic association, the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, or COMECON.
At the time, the Soviet Union asked North Korea to modify its development strategy to focus on agriculture and join COMECON.
However, Kim Il Sung rejected this and drew up a plan for North Korea to develop heavy industry and agriculture on its own.
North Korea developed a tractor with indigenous technology, but during the first test, the tractor moved backwards instead of forward, leading to widespread disappointment among cadres.
However, Kim Il Sung said that if a tractor moves backwards, “it means it can also go forward,” and called on cadres to “continue their development rather than be disappointed” since the test was only a first step.
Recalling this anecdote, Kim Jong Un reportedly congratulated the technical developers and cadres for their hard work, telling them that “the reconnaissance satellite photos were nothing but a first step, but also a success that amounts to a historic occasion.”
The next day, Dec. 19, Kim’s conversation with the NADA officials was reportedly turned into lecture materials and distributed to party cadres.
In the meantime, high-ranking North Korean cadres reportedly criticized Kim’s sister, Central Committee vice department director Kim Yo-jong, for “disgracing” the country after she released a statement refuting criticism of the photos by South Korean experts who dismissed the images as “crude.”
In the statement, Kim explained the low resolution of the released photos by saying, “Who will install and test an expensive high-resolution camera for a single-shot test which takes no more than 830 seconds?”
Basically, she argued that even though they have high-resolution equipment, they used low-quality equipment to save money.
Some North Korean cadres reportedly criticized the statement.
“How could anyone publicly say we couldn’t shoot better photos than this because we have no money? If anybody else had said that, they would have gotten in a lot of trouble,” they said, based on the source’s account.
Meanwhile, South Korea responded to North Korea’s release of satellite photos of Seoul by releasing on Dec. 22 high-resolution color photos of the area around Pyongyang’s Kim Il Sung Square taken by the Compact Advanced Satellite Cas500-1, clearly demonstrating the divide in satellite technology between the two Koreas.
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