North Korea’s defense ministry recently launched safety inspections of old bridges in regions where important strategic assets are deployed, Daily NK has learned.
The move appears to be connected to efforts to inspect, repair and expand facilities to ensure as much as possible the wartime mobility of strategic weapons.
A Daily NK source in North Korea said Monday that the defense ministry an order from the General Staff Department earlier this month to carry out safety inspections of old bridges or bridges that fall short of load regulations in regions of the country with major strategic assets. The order instructed the military to carry out the inspections in January and then commence with repairs and reconstruction of old infrastructure from mid-February.
The source said the order reflects the perceived need for inspections and repairs of old bridges to realize the Supreme Command’s operational vision for ensuring the mobility of missile transport and launch vehicles in wartime.
In fact, missile transport and launch vehicles reportedly experienced limited road mobility due to unsafe bridges during North Korea’s missile launches from last September to early this year.
The North Korean military suffered headaches in reducing road movement as much as possible, including transporting missiles by train to stations near launch sites.
Believing this to be the country’s greatest weakness in its preparations for war, commanders are carrying out a safety inspection of bridges in regions with major strategic assets.
The source said the defense ministry says “the General Staff Department is taking safety inspections, load measurements and repairs of bridges in major strategic regions nationwide this year very seriously, calling on [the defense ministry] to carry them out,” with the ministry in turn saying that the bridge safety inspections are “very important in that they can determine victory or defeat in wartime.”
The staff department of the defense ministry reportedly entrusted the military construction bureau with carrying out the order.
The bureau will deploy small-scale safety inspection teams composed of sappers to regions with major strategic assets nationwide from Jan. 11 to the end of the month.
The source said the defense ministry has given to the safety inspection teams military maps marked with the bridges they will need to inspect in major strategic regions such as the outskirts of Pyongyang, North Pyongan Province and Chagang Province.
“The defense ministry has ordered [the military construction bureau] to submit estimates for what they will need to repair the bridges marked on the map to support loads based on sapper regulations, and to build military-use bridges next to the existing bridges,” he said.
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