A video has been released by the Ukrainian secret service of two North Korean spies being snared in an undercover sting as proof the country is not assisting Kim Jong-un’s nuclear missile programme.
An article in the New York Times earlier this month raised concerns Pyongyang was relying on outside help and pointed the finger at the Ukraine.
Kiev strongly denied the allegations, stating it had never supplied defence technology to North Korea, and has now attempted to back it up by releasing the footage.
It shows two men supposedly photographing secret weapon plans in a bunker in the Ukraine before the special services swoop to arrest them.
The footage shows two men supposedly photographing secret weapon plans in a bunker in the Ukraine before the special services swoop to arrest them
The entrapment mission was organised by officials to capture the pair who arrived in the Ukraine via the North Korean embassy in Moscow.
Missile experts in the country were said to have got wind of the two spies and alerted the authorities who planned for months to catch them in the act.
When the covert team gathered enough evidence, they swooped and arrested them in a dusty Ukrainian garage.
They are now locked up in the the city of Zhytomyr and in their trial in 2012, it emerged they had been searching for information on ballistic missiles, missile systems, missile construction, spacecraft engines, solar batteries, fast-emptying fuel tanks, mobile launch containers, powder accumulators and military government standards to take back to North Korea, according to CNN.
An officer at the secret service who was on the case told the site on condition of anonymity it was ‘impossible’ North Korea had obtained any missile technology.
He said all their espionage attempts had all been intercepted and that no North Koreans were free in the country.
The American news outlet attempted to talk to the two men, but both refused to be interviewed over fears for their families.
Yesterday, North Korean state media showed Kim Jong-un (pictured) standing next to the diagram of an intercontinental ballistic missile
North Korea has also branded Trump ‘weird’ and ‘ego-driven’, not long after Trump claimed Kim was starting to ‘respect’ him
On August 1, the Ukraine denied that it had ever supplied defence technology to North Korea, responding to the article in the New York Times that said North Korea may have purchased rocket engines from Ukrainian factory Yuzhmash.
Concern that North Korea is close to achieving its goal of putting the mainland United States within range of a nuclear weapon has raised global tensions in recent weeks. The United States is a key backer of Ukraine.
The secretary of the Ukrainian Security and Defence Council, Oleksandr Turchynov, said Ukraine ‘has never supplied rocket engines or any kind of missile technology to North Korea.’
State-owned Yuzhmash said it had not produced military-grade ballistic missiles since independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.
‘In the years of independence, Yuzhmash has not produced, and is not producing, missiles and military missile systems,’ it said in a statement published on their company’s website.
The sanctions have been imposed on North Korea aimed at slashing its annual export revenue of £2.3billion by a third. Pictured: A missile is fired during the combined military exercise between the US and South Korea
With most of the food going to the army, millions of ordinary people are struggling to eat every day. Pictured: : A North Korean long-range rocket is launched
Since then, a bitter war of words has broken out mainly between the US and North Korea.
North Korea has warned the United Kingdom faces a ‘miserable end’ if it joins the ongoing tensions on the peninsula.
In a stark warning to Britain, Kim Jong-un used his government news agency to tell Theresa May not to follow the aggressive rhetoric of Donald Trump.
The Korean Central News Agency reported: ‘We solemnly warn not only the US and the puppet group but also satellites, including the UK and Australia, which are taking advantage of the present war manoeuvres against the North.’
This follows a further escalation in the animosity between the country and US President Donald Trump, in which Kim accused America of leading a ‘beheading operation’ to oust the Korean leader.
North Korea’s military said in a statement that it would launch an unspecified ‘merciless retaliation and unsparing punishment’ on the United States over the Ulchi Freedom Guardian drills that began Monday for an 11-day run.
Despite the threat, an unprompted direct attack is extremely unlikely because the United States vastly outguns Pyongyang, which values the continuation of its dictatorship above all else.
Impoverished North Korea hates the annual drills in part because they force it to respond with expensive military measures of its own.
The North Korean statement accused the United States of deploying unspecified ‘lethal’ weapons for the drills that it says involve a ‘beheading operation’ training aimed at removing absolute ruler Kim Jong-un.