Pyeongtaek's Mystery Ball in the Sky
Landscape Photo
"Its been there about seven or eight years. We have no idea what it is; we just thought it might be a water tank or something. People have said is an oil tank, or some kind of antenna. But why should we even bother to try to figure it out. Isn't it easier if we just consider it as a big ball? I like it because it makes the scene of our village very familiar from a distance."
A titan standing 30 meters tall, the "ball" is about eight years old. For the residents living near the field of Daechu-ri, located in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province, their lives have revolved around a mysterious ball mounted in the sky, all the while never knowing exactly what it is.
You can see it easily within a radius of 15 kilometers. Standing 30 meters high, it might not be a big deal compared to skyscrapers in the big cities, but in the open field without a high mountain in the backdrop, the ball is quite noticeable.
As you see it in distance, you may think it is just a kind of water tank. However, it has the form of a perfect sphere. An oil tank, especially a liquefied gas tank, can be in the shape of a sphere because it can endure high pressure. But such oil or gas tanks should be set up near the ground or beneath it to closely monitor the possibility of an explosion.
Gleaming white, the ball shines against the dark green of spring and summer. Getting closer to it only makes one more curious.
I tried to find this ball through map-search engine Google Earth. The high-resolution satellite program that can even focus on automobiles is not only fascinating, but scary. I could easily find Daechu-ri and Dodu-ri, the extensive fields near the ball. But the ball's exact location was forbidden because it is located in an area used by the U.S. military. I already knew that the ball was the property of the Camp Humphreys. Google Earth shows a clear view of the village, field, and estimated coordinates of the white ball, among the hazy outline of Camp Humphrey. It was 17 digital numbers.
I visited Daechu-ri frequently over the last three years. It is impossible to miss the white ball in the vast field.
Like the residents, I was also curious about this fixture of the landscape, but I did not ask about it. As the ball is located in a military area, it must be a military installation. Perhaps it is a tank that can hold water or petroleum.
I have been curious about the structure ever since I learned that almost nobody in the area knew its exact usage. Residents did not know about the ball, nor did activists who are pushing for the withdrawal of the U.S. military from Korea. Seeing the ball again and again, it became more and more familiar to me.
I have asked for help from the public information office of the ROK-U.S. Combined Forces Command, and uploaded many pictures on the Internet portal site to find out more. There was no answer from the office, but someone sent me a memo through the Web site.
"This is not a ball... Weren't there any Air Force airfields nearby the photographing spot? If there are, it should be some kind of radar." Actually, I already guessed it might be radar. I wanted to know its exact name, material, and usage, so I asked again.
"I'm sorry but such military information about material or capability is not open to the public; moreover that type of U.S. military equipment is forbidden. I just know that this sphere-shaped radar is much better than rectangle-shaped radar in terms of capability of detection, and almost every large-scale U.S. Armed Forces base is using this kind of radar. You should find somebody who served in the KATUSA radar troop in the U.S. Air Force if you want to know more."
If I can find the right experts, maybe I could know the white ball's name. I met a military expert who served in the air force, and photographer Lee Si-woo, who made a documentary about the division of the Korean Peninsula.
When we think about a "radar," we usually imagine a spinning plate-shaped antenna. The "radome" (radar + dome) protects this type of radar with a sphere of special insulating material. As with a gas storage tank, the sphere-shaped cover can effectively endure not only inside pressure, but also outside pressure. The material of the cover does not deteriorate the radar's capability, but it protects the radar from rain, snow, and wind. The capability of radar is measured by its range and accuracy; these are directly connected with the size of the radar. Therefore, a longer diameter makes a better radar.
The radome is not only used as a ground radar, but also for aircraft and vessels. The radome is essential for fighting planes because modern wars are now determined by information technology. A radome is usually fitted onto the cockpit of normal fighter planes. An AH-64D Apache Longbow fits its radome on the main wing.
An early warning system called E-3, or AWACS, performs airborne surveillance, command, and control (C2) functions at an altitude of 10,000 meters, and the core equipment of E-3 is the 9.14-meter diameter radome on the machine. The E-3's detection distance is 400 kilometers, and it can analyze 600 targets in the area and trace 200 of them. For reference, the distance from Seoul to Pyongyang is only 230 kilometers.
I showed to many people the picture of the white ball on a postcard, one with the white ball seen through the weeds. People usually recognized it as a water tank, but some people actually thought it was a giant golf ball. An art gallery representative said to me, "So you are doing a project about golf?" Hearing that, this photo looks just like a golf ball on a tee.
"Right now, somebody is watching your every movement." This may sound like something from a science-fiction movies, but instead, it's real.
In the greatest surveillance effort ever made, the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) created a global spy system -- codename ECHELON -- which captures and analyzes virtually every phone call, fax, email and telex message sent anywhere in the world. ECHELON is controlled by the NSA and operated in conjunction with the Government Communications Head Quarters (GCHQ) of England, the Communications Security Establishment (CSE) of Canada, the Australian Defense Security Directorate (DSD), and the General Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) of New Zealand. These organizations are bound together under a secret 1948 agreement, UKUSA, whose terms and text remain under wraps even today.
The ECHELON system is fairly simple in design: It positions intercept stations all over the world to capture all satellite, microwave, cellular, and fiber-optic communications traffic, and then processes this information through the massive computer capabilities of the NSA, including advanced voice recognition and optical character recognition (OCR) programs.
It looks for code words or phrases -- known as the ECHELON "dictionary" -- that will prompt the computers to flag the message for recording and transcribing for future analysis. Intelligence analysts at each of the respective "listening stations" maintain separate keyword lists for them to analyze any conversation or document flagged by the system, which is then forwarded to the respective intelligence agency headquarters that requested the intercept. Besides the main five countries, there are other countries that help the U.S. spy system, and Korea is one of them.
In May 2001, the European Union reported that ECHELON is "the electronic, international spy system of the U.S. with confidential attitude." The report recommends not using phone, fax, and Internet while sending secret information. Many media compare the identity of ECHELON to "Big Brother," the omnipresent overseer of George Orwell's novel "1984." There are U.S. radome bases in England and Australia, observing messages from all over the world.
Peace activists of England and Australia have been gathering with pickets signs, trying to hit the radars with golf balls and insisting the militaries dismantle the bases.
I am not sure that whether the golf ball of Hwangsaewool field is used for the same purpose. A military expert said, "If it was that important of a military facility, it would not be installed on the open field so that people can see or approach it easily."
He suggested the radome is for weather forecasting. However, radomes for weather forecasting are usually smaller than Hwangsaewool's radome. Also, considering that scout planes frequently take off and land at Camp Humphrey and Osan Air Force near the radome, and these scout planes observe activities as far away as Okinawa and North Korea, it is not very difficult to imagine the radome's true function.
The military expert emphasized that, "The most important U.S. base on the Korean peninsula should be Pyeongtaek, because it is the core base of communication security." Therefore, the golf ball of Hwangsaewool is not that simple.
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