North Korea’s second destroyer seriously damaged during launch attempt

In an attempt to launch North Korea’s latest destroyer on 21 May 2025, the country’s Chongjin Shipyard may have instead damaged the ship virtually beyond repair.

In a ceremony overseen by North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un, the ship was supposed to be side-launched into the basin at Chongjin, but due to a malfunction of the launch mechanism the ship was left languishing on its side, with the stern in the water and the bow still on the jetty, as can be seen in the accompanying satellite image provided to ESD by Airbus Defence and Space.

In an unusually candid report by the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), the incident was described as follows: “Due to inexperienced command and operational carelessness in the course of the launch, the launch slide of the stern departed first and stranded as the bogie failed to move in parallel, holes made at some sections of the warship’s bottom disrupted its balance, and the bow failed to leave the slipway, leading to a serious accident.”

US naval analyst Carl Schuster told CNN that he thought the stresses from the botched launch would “warp the hull, induce cracks and (possibly) snap the keel, depending on where the greatest stress falls.”

The launch of major surface vessels are complex operations that require a high degree of technical precision. At BAE Systems’ Scotstoun yard on the River Clyde, for example, large warships launched stern first down a slipway are typically weighed down with metal chains at the stern, causing them to turn on launch before they collide with the far bank of the Clyde.

For ships being side launched, it is an absolute necessity that the whole vessel enters the water perpendicular to the direction of launch. A much safer, yet less spectacular, way of launching a sizeable warship is to gradually float it out in a dry dock, but North Korea appears to have no such facilities.

The Korean Peoples Army Naval Force (KPANF) has not historically operated large surface combatants. When the KPANF launched its first 5,000-tonne Choe Hyon-class destroyer on 25 April 2025, it became the force’s largest surface combatant. The destroyer that suffered the launch calamity on 21 May was the second ship of this class.

Apart from the destroyer Choe Hyon, the KPANF operates a couple of antiquated Najin-class frigates that were built in the early 1970s and around half a dozen corvettes, most of which date from the 1960s. The significant damage caused to the second Choe Hyon-class destroyer on its launch thus inflicts a significant blow to the KPANF’s ocean-going aspirations.

In the aftermath of the launch accident the KCNA reported that Kim Jong Un “made stern assessment, saying that it was a serious accident and criminal act caused by sheer carelessness, irresponsibility and unscientific empiricism which should never occur and could not be tolerated”. According to the KCNA, the North Korean leader stated that those responsible “would have to be dealt with at the plenary meeting of the Party Central Committee to be convened next month, and censured them for the fault”.