Did North Korea market missiles to Taiwan?

I have here an article from the July 18 Chuunichi Shinbun. For some reason it is no longer avaliable on the website (404 error), but luckily you can still see the original Japanese text in Google cache.

Did North Korea market missiles to Taiwan?

Seoul- Kiyoshi Nakamura.

According to the issue of Korean Magazine ‘Choson Weekly’ which went on sale July 17th, a former representative (72 years old) of North Korea’s People’s Supreme Congress (basically their ‘parliament’) who recently defected to the South said in a statement to South Korea’s National Information Institute that the North “visited Taiwan for the purpose of exporting North Korean made missiles.”

When asked about the nuclear problem he said, “North Korea is manufacturing kiloton capacity nuclear weapons.” On the other hand, “The North has little confidence in their large nuclear weapons, and so are also manufacturing 500 kiloton nukes.”

According to the same publication, this representative was also a researcher at the “Oceanographic Industrial Research Facility”, which is a subsidiary of the Secondary Economic Association that covers the entire munitions industry. They primarily develop such things as missiles, and are responsible for production and external business.

The representative let known his desire to defect in May of this year, in a third country.

He was allowed into Korea by the National Information Institute, and investigations are continuing.

Has anyone seen this story reported anywhere else? I’m particularly asking you Korean-speaking Marmot readers.

Update: Adam, your correction is noted.

3 thoughts on “Did North Korea market missiles to Taiwan?”

  1. The slight difference between “sell” and “make a sales call” makes this story a little less than earth-shattering. I’m pretty sure he’s claiming just that a visit took place, not that any purchases were made or actual missiles shipped. Such a story might be good enough to win entry into the ROK, but I don’t think Taiwan is about to make some Machiavellian overture to NK so it can get its hands on some missiles.

    Chekc ALC’s entry for urikomi to see what I mean (http://www2.alc.co.jp/ejr/index.php?word_in=%94%84%82%E8%8D%9E%82%DD&word_in2=%82%A0%82%A2%82%A4%82%A6%82%A8&word_in3=PVawEWi72JXCKoa0Je )

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