By Dan Drollette Jr, February 24, 2017
If you want to pierce the extraordinary curtain of secrecy surrounding North Korea, you have to be creative.
Case in point: North Korea’s own propaganda images, which can be more revealing than their creators intended. In this New York Times “Interpreter” piece, a series of experts deconstruct a March 2016 image from this largely isolated country, which gives away clues to the possible range of the weapon, Kim Jong-un’s relationship with the military, and the precise location of were the photo was taken.
It’s a fascinating look into the high-tech forensics and traditional detective work that goes into tracking North Korea’s internal politics and weapons programs—and eerily reminiscent of how Kremlinologists during the depths of the Cold War would try to figure out what was going on inside the Soviet Union’s Politburo by examining photos of missiles on display during the annual May Day parades in Moscow.
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