While he’s not dead we did learn this week that Kim Jong Un has a private floating water-park built on a barge!
You can even see it on Google maps here:
Dropped pin
Near Sea of Japan (also known as the East Sea)
Now how would you go about striking a blow for democracy by sinking it?
Assume that one night after a few beverages you posted this idea on one of the less reputable crowd funding sites (that don’t explicitly bar funding of military actions by non state actors). Then it went viral and now you have a millionish dollars at the (Panamanian) bank and a moral obligation to scupper some water-slides.
Option 1 - Sabotage
Probably not possible - I don’t think any amount of money could persuade a North Korean to do something so stupid that would wind up with them and grandma staring down the barrel of anti-aircraft cannon. This tub was built back in the father’s reign so it’s doubtful the controls are modern enough to be stuxnetted into running the ballast pumps in full reverse overnight.
Option 2 - Aerial assault
North Korea definitely has air defenses and even if their planes suck the missiles will be effective so no Bacardi Bomber here, this is a job for a drone.
There’s an airport just across the bay so chances are they wouldn’t immediately shoot down a civilian appearing aircraft on an approach vector. Given all the shady shit the Kim family is into you’d probably just need to spoof another North Korean transponder number and tell the tower it’s an urgent Caviar and Patron delivery.
The problem is how do you even dent an ocean going barge? These things are massive with multiple watertight compartments and a hull built of thick steel. Honestly the luxury yachts moored down the quay would be a much softer target but any common-or-garden anarchist can torch one of those, you only go down in history for sinking the swimming pool.
It’d probably absorb multiple hits from an armor piercing munition like a hellfire missile without being critically damaged. You as a private citizen aren’t going to have access to anything so sophisticated.
Seems like one of those end of life business jets the cartels are so fond of would be ideal, plenty of range, speed and readily available at a good price.
Whatever you use is going to be on a one way trip so you could pack it pretty full; an older Learjet has ~4,000kg delta empty to full but at least half that’s gotta be fuel - depending on where you start. I’m thinking you’d need something of truck bomb magnitude to be assured of making a dent from above, especially if what you’re using is a old stock or improvised. Funnily enough there’s suddenly a surplus of old airliners sitting around.
At least getting it there would be relatively simple, theoretically you could just program the autopilot to descend to 0 elevation at certain set of GPS coordinates but in practice you’d probably want a man in the loop for final approach. This might be tricky as while I’m sure there are satellite data/phone companies that cover the area the chances of jamming are high and the lag might be too much.
Since it’s a fairly distinctive structure training an AI to recognize it might be possible, then just use flight sim game code to fly a path into center mass. Trouble is you only get one try.
Option 3 - Ghost ride the ship
I feel this has the most promise for being effective since you’d hit it at or below the waterline but hardest to actually reach the target.
A good size motor yacht or fishing boat would definitely have sufficient cargo capacity and maybe range. And while there are quite a lot of experimental autonomous vessels navigating the globe, you could probably steer it remotely since it’s a boat and nothing happens too quickly.
A solar powered boat like the example below would theoretically have unlimited range but it’d be slow and not much payload. You’d have to buy the good stuff as we learned from the Takata airbag debacle that ammonium nitrate does not like humidity. You also don’t want it to go off accidentally if run over by an LNG tanker...
It’d be advisable to send a dozen or since this particular one got stuck in a fishing net and had to be retrieved by the Canadian Navy.
If more than one made it to the area then you could coordinate a swarm to pop multiple compartments.
Where to launch?
The biggest problem I see is going to be acquiring a very large quantity of stuff that’ll go boom, wherever that is will likely be your launch site since stopping for fuel isn’t going to be an option.
Ideally somewhere with lots of mining and corruption.
South Korea is out, they don’t want to start a war and will likely intercept anything flying/sailing north. China would be an excellent source of affordable supplies and expertise but they watch foreigners closely and hoo boy you don’t wanna get caught pulling a stunt like this there.
Japan has plenty of coastline and airstrips, there’s also likely to be some nationalist factions who’d like to take a harder line on NK but I feel like you’d have a hard time acquiring supplies.
Russia would seem promising, Vladivostok is actually quite close. They might even sell you some red army surplus if you could come up with an explanation that involves crushing dissent somewhere.
Then there’s SE Asia: Vietnam, Cambodia, Philippines, Indonesia etc. I can’t speak to any of these but you might find an intelligence agency with a beef against North Korea to sponsor or at least turn a blind eye.
At least with a jet you can load it up and then launch at the objective quickly and as Carlos Ghosn proved nobody pays too much attention to private airstrips. You might even open up middle Eastern supply options.
I’m making the assumption that the military expertise is readily available on the open market and anything technology related could be disguised as a student research project or better a #disruptive technology startup (we’re like Uber for dynamite fishing)
My personal favorite is the flotilla of solar boats for the redundancy and stand off capability.
Your turn OPPO how would you send chubby boi’s slip n’ slide to Davey Jones’ Locker?
Addendum:
I wrote most of this at the weekend and by the end was thinking it seemed a bit far fetched. Then a bunch of Trump Rally Mercs tried to launch an amphibious coup in Venezuela while tweeting about it...