A screen displays a broadcast of a news report featuring North Korean leader Kim Jong Un at Seoul Station in Seoul, South Korea, on April 21, 2020. (SeongJoon Cho/Bloomberg)
South Korea said North Korean weapons have been used by Hamas in its war with Israel, even as Pyongyang has denied the arms trade.
South Korea’s spy agency, the National Intelligence Service, released a photo of a North Korean rocket part on Monday to show Hamas fighters used an F-7 rocket-propelled grenade launcher manufactured in North Korea.
The NIS is “collecting and accumulating specific evidence regarding the scale and timing of North Korea’s supply of weapons to Hamas and others, but currently it’s difficult to provide them, considering source protection and diplomatic relations,” it said in a statement.
Hamas, designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S. and European Union, infiltrated Israel on Oct. 7 and killed almost 1,200 people. Israel responded with an offensive on the Gaza Strip that has killed more than 22,000 Palestinians, according to the health ministry in Gaza, which is governed by Hamas. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who’s visiting the Middle East this week, warned that the conflict could easily spread across the region.
The news that Hamas used North Korean weapons was reported by Voice of America last week with a picture showing an F-7 rocket with Korean characters engraved on it. The NIS said its “assessment is the same as the VOA report.”
North Korea has denied its weapons were used by Hamas to attack Israel, saying it’s a “groundless and false rumor.” Korean Central News Agency, the state news agency, in October accused the U.S. of seeking to divert the blame for the war from itself to a third country.
Pyongyang has also been said to be supplying weapons to Russia. The transfer of such missiles increases the pool of munitions the Kremlin can draw upon to attack Ukraine, while providing North Korean leader Kim Jong Un with weapons, cash and commodities that help prop up his sanctions-hit economy.
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