North Korea has successfully refloated the brand-new destroyer that humiliatingly capsized during launch in May, possibly with the help of a bunch of strange giant balloons that were seen flying around it.
Last month, North Korea faced national embarrassment after the brand-new destroyer weighing 5,000 tons became unbalanced and overturned when shipyard officials tried to launch it sideways.
The Destroyer that North Korea tried to threaten the U.S. with Capsized! 😆😆😆😆😆 pic.twitter.com/DZOf45Fdp1
— Suzie rizzio (@Suzierizzo1) May 27, 2025
North Korea made up for the humiliating failure this week by successfully refloating the new destroyer, possibly with the help of the previously mentioned batch of balloons that were seen around it.
“The balloons aren’t thought to have played a leading role in righting the vessel, a task that appeared to have been primarily accomplished with cranes,” The Wall Street Journal reported, citing experts.
But it’s possible, the Journal reported via the experts, that “the balloons could have helped keep the ship afloat, obscured the view from the skies or lifted objects off the destroyer.”
North Korea appears to be attempting to lift up their destroyer with methods inspired by Pixar’s hit 2009 film Up. Note the numerous balloons in the air above the destroyer. pic.twitter.com/aHdZpWRQu7
— Decker Eveleth (@dex_eve) May 25, 2025
Will the United States go back to war with North Korea?
To be clear, this is speculation.
“It’s all a mystery,” weapons analyst Decker Eveleth of CNA stressed to the Journal, adding that there’s no modern precedent for using balloons like this.
According to Eveleth, roughly 40 balloons were used, all of them measuring a whopping 20 feet wide.
South Korean National Assembly lawmaker and military analyst Yu Yong-weon suggested that the balloons weren’t used to refloat the destroyer but for something else altogether.
“It looks like what appear to be balloons have been installed not to refloat the ship, but to prevent the ship from further flooding,” she said, according to CNN.
Retired U.S. Navy Capt. Carl Schuster speculated that the balloons were either used to prevent “low- to mid-level drone reconnaissance” or to reduce the heavy stress on the part of the ship that was still stuck on the pier.
“That is the area that is most likely to have been damaged, suffered the most severe damage and remains under intense stress while the forward area remains out of the water,” he told CNN.
🇰🇵 North Korea has finally raised its sunken destroyer. The photo shows the ship’s bow has been cut off pic.twitter.com/OGVcyVUwjK
— Sprinter Observer (@SprinterObserve) June 4, 2025
However, North Korea might further damage the destroyer if it’s relying on the gigantic balloons to either keep it afloat or raise it, according to Nick Childs, a senior fellow for naval forces and maritime security at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
“It is highly likely that the ship is under quite a lot of stress anyway,” he said, adding that lifting the destroyer from above with balloons could worsen this stress.
Meanwhile, North Korea’s state media has remained completely mum about the balloons, not mentioning them at all in its reports about the since-recovered destroyer.
North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, for his part, has vowed to have the destroyer fixed by the end of June, at the latest.
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