Panama Found Weapons on North Korean Ship, But No One Cared

By Gregory John "G.J." Vitale on July 18, 2013

What happens when the world’s most infamous jerk-of-a country gets caught with its hand down its pants? (By hand, of course, I mean large, explosive weapons, and by pants I mean a ship trying to cross the Panama Canal.) Well, if it happens in the midst of a nationally covered murder/manslaughter/self-defense killing trial, then nothing except small news coverage online and an article by moi.

Essentially what happened this past Tuesday was that a North Korean-flagged ship was stopped at one of the levels of the Panama Canal under suspicion that it was shipping drugs. In accordance with international law, all large vessels are required to be tracked by the Automatic Identification System (AIS). The ship had been suspiciously popping on and off the AIS for the month leading up to its arrival at Panama, provoking authorities to search its cargo. The ship, named the Chong Chon Gang, apparently has a long history of illicit activities and safety violations. Allegedly, it was on its way to North Korea from Cuba.

I’m not a weapons professional by any means so I’m just going to straight-up quote what was apparently found via Yahoo: “A private defense analysis firm that examined a photograph of the find said the ship appeared to be transporting a radar-control system for a Soviet-era surface-to-air missile system, and Cuba later called the equipment on the boat “obsolete defensive weapons” from the mid-20th century.”

So other than getting some actual news up on my pages, I’m writing about this because I’m shocked how little coverage it received off the bat. Call me ignorant, call me flippant if you will, but I think it’s because we’re all drained from the Zimmerman/Trayvon saga. Rightfully so, of course, but I can’t help but think if this were to happen a month from now, it’d be ALL OVER THE NEWS. I was at least expecting Hannity to talk about how Obama was too distracted by the Trayvon case to pay attention to national security. Not even that.

Sadly, my reading public, I had to find out about this from a Facebook friend…and one of those “who the hell are you” friends not an actual friend. Now, I hate when the news uses scare tactics to frighten the American public, but this was, in my opinion, fairly noteworthy news and a lot people missed out on it. This very second I’m seeing more Trayvon and more Paula Deen pieces flying onto Uloop’s pages. Zero articles about this story…how do you define “news?”

North Korea, which had been slapped with a weapons ban by the United Nations for refusing to halt their nuclear testing, has still not issued a statement regarding the Panama government’s findings. Conversely, Panama’s President Ricardo Martinelli was kind enough to tweet pictures of the ships cargo. Since the story broke, most analysts agree that the find is not a threat to the United States.

Follow Uloop

Apply to Write for Uloop News

Join the Uloop News Team

Discuss This Article

Get Top Stories Delivered Weekly

Back to Top

Log In

Contact Us

Upload An Image

Please select an image to upload
Note: must be in .png, .gif or .jpg format
OR
Provide URL where image can be downloaded
Note: must be in .png, .gif or .jpg format

By clicking this button,
you agree to the terms of use

By clicking "Create Alert" I agree to the Uloop Terms of Use.

Image not available.

Add a Photo

Please select a photo to upload
Note: must be in .png, .gif or .jpg format