South Korea Alleges North Korea’s Kim Jong Un Mulling Selling Weapons to Hamas – News18

The South Korean spy agency claimed that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un ordered officials to support Palestinians and is considering selling weapons to terrorist groups in West Asia.

A report by the Wall Street Journal said North Korea earlier in the past has sold anti tank rocket launchers to Hamas in the past and said there is a possibility that Pyongyang will try to export more weapons amid the war in Gaza.

The claim was also made by South Korean lawmakers, according to a separate report by Yonhap News. The South Korean military said that based on photos and videos of the October 7 attack it appears that Hamas terrorists were using North Korean weapons.

South Korean officials, two experts on North Korean arms and a report by the Associated Press on weapons captured on the battlefield by Israel point toward Hamas using Pyongyang’s F-7 rocket-propelled grenade, a shoulder-fired weapon that fighters typically use against armoured vehicles.

Matt Schroeder, a senior researcher with Small Arms Survey who wrote a guide to Pyongyang’s light weapons said that Hamas published images of their fighters with a launcher with a rocket-propelled grenade with a distinctive red stripe across its warhead, and other design elements matching the F-7.

Pyongyang has dismissed the allegations as false.

Yoo Sang-bum, a lawmaker from the ruling People Power Party, said that North Korea is trying to take advantage of the war in Palestine. “North Korea appears to be trying to take advantage of the Israel-Hamas war in multiple ways,” Yoo was quoted as saying. Israeli ambassador to South Korea Akiva Tor said Tel Aviv was aware of North Korean-made weapons being used by Hamas last week.

North Korea’s ambassador to the UN, Kim Song, dismissed the report as “groundless rumours”. Song said that Washington is trying to blame a “third country” for the war in West Asia which has happened due to its own mistakes in the region.

“North Korea has long supported Palestinian militant groups, and North Korean arms have previously been documented amongst interdicted supplies,” NR Jenzen-Jones, a weapons expert who works as the director of the consultancy Armament Research Services was quoted as saying by the Associated Press.