How North Korea Salvaged a Capsized Warship

North Korea’s plan to modernize its Navy had an embarrassing setback late last month, when a new warship capsized during its launch. To get the vessel floating again, engineers toiling under the do-or-die mantra of their leader, Kim Jong-un, turned to an old-fashioned solution.

Lacking the machinery to easily lift the 5,000-ton ship, a Choe Hyun-class destroyer, they used big balloons and deployed hundreds of workers, according to analysts and satellite images.

On Thursday, two weeks after the accident, the 470-foot-long vessel was visible in an upright position in the harbor of Chongjin on North Korea’s northeastern coast. It was floating about 580 feet away from the ramp where it had failed to launch properly.

In most developed countries, including South Korea, engineers would have used a barge with a gigantic crane to lift the ship and set it right, said Hong Min, an expert on the North Korean military at the Seoul-based Korea Institute for National Unification.

Another common method of righting a capsized ship is called parbuckling. That technique was memorably deployed in 2013 on the 951-foot-long Italian cruise liner, the Costa Concordia, which toppled after hitting rocks in Giglio, Italy.