korean unification studies

There seems to be one possibility that has been overlooked by most analysts in the Syria-North Korea connection – the possibility that the ‘relevant materials’ taken by Israeli commandos before the facility was destroyed, were in fact North Korean engineers.

Sure it’s pure speculation, but so is just about every other report on the Syria-North Korea connection. Let’s look at the rumours which support this theory.

Commandos from the General Staff Reconnaissance Unit or Sayeret Matkal Israel’s most elite special forces, infiltrated the Syrian Dayr az-Zawr facility undetected to extract ‘relevant materials’. These ‘relevant materials’ were then provided as evidence to the United States, which then acquiesced to the Israeli destruction of the facility.

According to several reports based on conversations with Chinese and North Korean sources, several North Korean personnel are thought to have been killed in the raid. The deaths, or shall we say, disappearance of the North Korean nuclear engineers, could be the key as to why everything remains very hidden.

Details of the raid have not been released, and all sides are maintaining an unusual silence regarding the affair. If the ‘relevant materials’ were in fact North Korean nuclear engineers, there are good reasons to keep it quiet on all sides.

Indeed, it also explains why the United States is willing to let the North Korea-Syria nuclear connection go and continue along the path of the Six Party Talks. The Syria-North Korean connection was after all, nipped in bud. Only days after arriving in Syria from their long sea journey on a North Korean container vessel, the nuclear engineers were kidnapped by Israeli commandos and the facility at which they were scheduled to commence work was blown sky high. It was an intelligence and counter-proliferation coup de grace.

Extracting several North Korean engineers while they’re asleep in quarters also seems a lot more plausible in terms of operational aspects than extracting a specific physical material, from what we’d assume to be a highly protected site.

North Korea held high-level talks with Syria during which the recent raid could have been a prime topic on the agenda. North Korea roundly condemned both Israel and the United States for the raid.

I guess this speculation can only be proven true by unusually large shipments of Kimchi being ordered by an Israeli holding facility in downtown Tel Aviv…

For a tad more speculation, see ROKDrop, for less speculation see DPRKStudies, Marmot’s Hole and DPRK Forum.