LOCATION Ryanggang Province, North Korea
NEAREST POPULATION HUB Hyesan
SECRECY OVERVIEW Existence unacknowledged: secret mountain lair of the former North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il.
Kim Jong-il, reputedly a great fan of the James Bond movies, all but completed his transformation into the perfect Bond villain by ordering construction of a secret military command center inside his country’s most sacred mountain, Mount Baekdu. Uncovered by foreign defense analysts in 2010, the complex is believed to have been many years in the building.
Mount Baekdu (which translates as “the white-headed mountain”) rises to over 2,700 meters (8,850 ft) on North Korea’s border with China. It is a spectacular stratovolcano with a habit of erupting about once a century on average (the next eruption is currently overdue). According to Korea’s foundation story, its first kingdom emerged here in the third millennium BC, and as such, the mountain is a highly venerated site.
North Korea’s founding father, Kim Il-sung, is said to have led Korea’s resistance against Japanese occupation from the dense forests around the mountain until 1945. It then became an important base for communist forces during the Korean War. North Korea’s official history claims that Kim Jong-il was born on the mountain beneath a double rainbow, though most evidence points to his birthplace as a small village near Khabarovsk in Russia.
The secret base, revealed by the Hong Kong bureau of the Kanwa Information Center in 2010, was said to have been built into the mountainside to serve as a command post should North Korea ever suffer an invasion from one or both of South Korea and the USA, or in the event that the Kim dynasty was threatened by an internal coup. Built close to one of the “Dear Leader” Kim Jong-il’s palaces, the complex has storage space for helicopters and fighter jets, with an airfield located conveniently close by. Evidence for the lair’s existence was garnered from a combination of satellite photos and the testimony of defectors.
If the world was hoping for a change in North Korea’s political approach after Kim Jong-il’s death in late 2011, a proclamation attributed to the National Defence Commission suggested otherwise: “We declare solemnly and confidently that foolish politicians around the world, including the puppet forces in South Korea, that they should not expect any change from us.” As long as the isolated state retains this ferocious attitude, the Mount Baekdu base will surely remain on standby.
1 FABLED MOUNTAIN An official North Korean photograph shows Kim Jong-il, the nation’s leader from 1994 until his death in 2011, casually posing at the top of Mount Baekdu. Official claims that he was born at this revered site are likely nothing more than myth.