Just days ago the world speculated.. the numbers stations went wild! Where was Kim Jong Un!? Dead!? Covid!? A doctor’s mistake costing him his life?

As the hours of mystery turned into days, we were all under an impression that Kim Yo Jong could assume the throne.

And then with a whimper instead of a bang, it appears Lil Kim has returned from the depths of his mysterious void..

The official government sanctioned North Korea news media showcased an image of him purportedly to be taken from May 1 of the Dear Leader attending a ribbon cutting ceremony at a fertilizer factory..

And he was looking dapper as ever.. with sister behind him, not quite ready to assume her perch high above the desperate people of North Korea just yet.

Why such a big ribbon?
Why such small scissors?

Before we count this story as true, remember that the appearance wasn’t immediately corroborated by officials in Washington and Seoul, and U.S. President Donald Trump and South Korea’s presidential office declined to comment…

As reported by several sources, North Korean numbers stations were alive and well like the old Cold War days over the past two weeks.. As speculation mounted since Kim’s vanishing act around mid-April, the few remaining short wave transmissions that fill the globe seemed to have an uptick..

A source familiar with these interesting secret spy games told us this around April 26: “South Korean numbers station failed to transmit into North Korea. These numbers stations send coded instructions to agents in foreign countries. The lack of a message today suggests that the agent(s) could be in danger, and receiving orders could be too risky.”

SHOW ME THE NUMBERS!

Numbers stations were all the in the heat of the Cold War..

A lot is known now about them.. But a lot more is not known and won’t be..

They are basically shortwave transmissions from foreign intelligence agencies to spies in the field of foreign countries. They carry encrypted messages in form of groups of numbers or letters, using either automated voice, Morse code, or a digital mode.

While the encryption methods used by most number stations are unknown, some have used and others are widely believed to use one-time pad: mathematical addition of a set of random numbers (the key) to the cleartext, which can be used only once, and must be destroyed after usage.

Some have used some really weird sounds, as you will see later in this story..

BUT ISN’T IT THE 21ST CENTURY?

And yes, even though the world has moved beyond the radio transmissions of the previous century, some numbers stations are still broadcasting.

The known numbers station emitting from North Korea is V15.. V15 is a unique numbers station in the way it transmits to their countries own radio station via Radio Pyongyang.It emits in AM on all Radio Pyongyang frequencies. It is also the only numbers station to ever transmit on FM..

WE DON’T KNOW ALL THERE IS TO KNOW ABOUT THE SPYING GAME

The strange world of spying–and hence numbers stations–is not confined to past oddities.. We still have it today..

Only days ago, news broke worldwide that China was spying on United States labs to see what progress there has been in getting a COVID-19 vaccine produced. This comes on the heels of accusations between multiple nations as to where the origins of the coronavirus pandemic originate from..

It would seem the most fitting coupling with an old fashioned pandemic are old fashioned spying games and numbers stations..

MOVE OVER UB40.. UVB-76 is more important

One of the most famous numbers stations in history comes from Russia.. Almost a decade ago, multiple news organizations reported some chilling information coupled with haunting photos.

WIRED reported on this back in the good old days of 2011..

This is what Peter Savodnic wrote then,

From a lonely rusted tower in a forest north of Moscow, a mysterious shortwave radio station transmitted day and night. For at least the decade leading up to 1992, it broadcast almost nothing but beeps; after that, it switched to buzzes, generally between 21 and 34 per minute, each lasting roughly a second—a nasally foghorn blaring through a crackly ether. The signal was said to emanate from the grounds of a voyenni gorodok (mini military city) near the village of Povarovo, and very rarely, perhaps once every few weeks, the monotony was broken by a male voice reciting brief sequences of numbers and words, often strings of Russian names: “Anna, Nikolai, Ivan, Tatyana, Roman.” But the balance of the airtime was filled by a steady, almost maddening, series of inexplicable tones.

On June 5, 2010, the buzzing stopped altogether. The following day, the broadcast resumed as if nothing had happened.. A famous incident happened on August 25, 2010 at 10:13 am, when UVB-76 went “haywire.” Again from WIRED:

First there was silence, then a series of knocks and shuffles that made it sound like someone was in the room. Before this day, all the beeping, buzzing, codes, and numbers had hinted at an evil force hovering on the airwaves. Now it seemed as though the wizard were suddenly about to reveal himself. For the first week of September, transmission was interrupted frequently, usually with what sounded like recorded snippets of “Dance of the Little Swans” from Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake.

Finally Savodnic wrote about this happening:

On the evening of September 7, something more dramatic—one listener even called it “existential”—transpired. At 8:48 pm Moscow time, a male voice issued a new call sign, “Mikhail Dmitri Zhenya Boris,” indicating that the station was now to be called MDZhB. This was followed by one of UVB-76’s (or MDZhB’s) typically nebulous messages: “04 979 D-R-E-N-D-O-U-T” followed by a longer series of numbers, then “T-R-E-N-E-R-S-K-I-Y” and yet more numbers

This weird recording from UVB-76 occurred on March 18, 2014:

An even creepier example of UVB-76 comes from December 2012, when a woman’s scream seemed to be heard during a transmission at 1 minute and ten seconds into the clip:

WHERE WAS UVB-76?

This is where things get interesting..

Yes, shortwave stations broadcast from undisclosed locations.. Numbers stations are somewhere deep in the heart of spy land.. But these broadcasts have to come from somewhere, right?

We just talked about that WIRED article in 2011 buy Peter Sovadnic. There was an interesting follow up in 2013 in THE KERNEL by James Cook. Cook wrote this in 2013 about the location of the strange signal:

Previous triangulation efforts had led to the discovery of the transmitter for UVB-76: a Russian military base on the outskirts of Povarovo, a small town nineteen miles from Moscow.
After the station changed location, two groups of urban explorers and UVB-76 followers travelled to the remote Russian town in an attempt to visit the military bunker that the signal had originated from for over thirty years. When they reached the town, a local man told them about the storm of 2010. One night a dense fog rolled in, and the military outpost was evacuated within ninety minutes.

Cook goes on,

After making their way across the site and avoiding the guard dog stationed outside, the groups found the bunker and military buildings in a state of abandonment.

Possessions and equipment were strewn across the base. Icy water had filled the bunker, yet clues were still to be found inside.
One group described the Povarov military bunker as “a quiet and lonely dark place, something like a maze with lots of corridors and rooms”.
A book was found that contained a log of messages sent by UVB-76. The ethereal signal that had fascinated the world for years now had a physical presence, along with confirmation that it had been run by the Russian military.

WHOSE COUNTING!? OTHER ODDITIES

UVB is not the only weird one.. There are plenty of examples of strange broadcasts in the annals of spy vs spy history.

Clyde Lewis has written about some good examples during radio shows past:

In 1976, as the United States was celebrating its bi-centennial year, U.S. Intelligence was monitoring radar and electromagnetic signals from the Soviet Union. What had their attention was a pulsing signal that was being sent at 3.26 and 17.54 megahertz. The pulsing signal modulated at a rate of several times a second, resembling the sound of a woodpecker. It was soon traced to an enormous transmitter array near Kiev in the Ukraine. Within a year of its discovery, people in Canada, Washington State and Oregon were complaining of all kinds of maladies. Eugene, Oregon suffered the most. People complained of pressure headaches, anxiety, fatigue, insomnia, lack of coordination, and numbness, accompanied by a high-pitched ringing in the ears.

Another famous numbers stations: The GONG:

The Backwards Music Station was found on various frequencies on the short wave band until about 2004 with the transmissions apparently coming from both the United States and in England. There are debates whether the station is some complex form of communication known as LINCOMPEX or whether it’s simply feedback from Naval transmitters