Podcast: Bruce Bechtol on How North Korean Weapons Ended Up in Gaza

North Korean arms dealers have been supplying Hamas with rockets, rocket-propelled grenades, laser-guided anti-tank missiles, and more.


A Hamas member carries a rocket launcher in the Gaza Strip in 2017. Wissam Nassar/picture alliance via Getty Images.
A Hamas member carries a rocket launcher in the Gaza Strip in 2017. Wissam Nassar/picture alliance via Getty Images.
Observation
Nov. 10 2023
About the authors

A weekly podcast, produced in partnership with the Tikvah Fund, offering up the best thinking on Jewish thought and culture.

Bruce E. Bechtol, Jr. is a professor of political science at Angelo State University and a retired Marine. He was formerly on the faculty at the Marine Corps Command and Staff College (2005–2010) and the Air Command and Staff College (2003–2005).

Podcast: Bruce Bechtol

 

When Israeli officials examined shells and munitions that have been fired into Israel recently by Hamas, they realized that they look like they were not made in Gaza. Similarly, when IDF inspectors looked at some of the rocket launchers Israel captured near the Gaza border, they discovered units with the word Bang-122 written on them in Korean. Bang is evidently an abbreviation of the Korean phrase bangsapo, which means “multiple rocket launcher,” and 122 is thought to indicate the caliber—122 millimeters.

It turns out that North Korean arms dealers have been supplying Hamas with rockets, rocket-propelled grenades, laser-guided anti-tank missiles, and more. North Korean engineers, meanwhile, have taught Hamas how to design and build the many tunnels that underneath Gaza.

Bruce Bechtol, a political scientist at Angelo State University and a former Marine, is the author of the recent article “Hamas Is Using North Korean Weapons Against Israel” at the website 19fortyfive.com, and the book, North Korean Military Proliferation in the Middle East and Africa, published in 2018. Here he joins Mosaic’s editor Jonathan Silver to discuss how Hamas connected with North Korea, what weapons are involved, and what each side gets out of the arrangement.

More about: Gaza War 2023, Israel & Zionism