First Ever North Korean Type 68 Pistol Review | Walk-in Wednesday

A Super-Rare Gun from North Korea! Wow! Could be the First Ever Video on this Gun!

Hey guys and welcome to another walk-in Wednesday. I've got a super, super, super, super rare gun to show you. It reminds me of a Larry David [inaudible 00:20]. The way I got this was for my Christmas holidays I took a cruise to North Korea. And I was cruising up and down the coast, I went to the little villages and towns and I got this from one of the markets on the corner and put it in my luggage and just brought it back with me.

Well, actually I'm totally lying. You didn't believe that story, I don't think. So I'm really thrilled to announce that this is for the first time in history, a Legacy Collectibles first, is there, I could not find any video, no YouTube videos on the type 68. I did see a Russian video that was pretty grainy and just was a takedown of a type 68 North Korean weapon. 

Check out the video by Ian from Forgotten Weapons

But I did find that Ian from Forgotten Weapons did a video about the type 70. Slightly different it looks more like a Makarov, whereas this gun was modeled after Tokarev. So the type 70 came later, I recommend you watch that video. Ian says that he's never seen one before, probably will never see one again. It's the rarest of the rare. So for Ian, someone like Ian who's seen them all, for him to say something like that is pretty significant. And not even Forgotten Weapons has a video on the type 68.


Rare TT30

The type 68 was a copy of the TT30. Some people say it's more like a TT33 but I believe it's copied after the TT30 and there's some significant differences. I couldn't find... Actually the TT30 is rare enough that I couldn't find any information about the TT30 but if I look at it and compare it to the TT33 we can see that the takedown lever is different. It's actually different on both sides. You can see the [inaudible 02:15] on the back of the slide are different. And the sights - front and rear sights are different. And then the most distinct is the grips are distinctly North Korean.

So the North Koreans, actually if we could take a look at the Korean War, the weapons from the Clarion War were generally from the Soviet Union. The United States obviously was involved along with other NATO nations and South Korea. North Korea didn't have its own weapons industry, so the Soviet Union provided most of the weapons including jets and things like that but the rifles and handguns came in from the Soviet Union. Mostly they had tons of weapons captured from the Germans and this was a good way to put those weapons to use. And also they had their own weapons industry.

Some of the weapons came from China but if you remember in the early 1950s during the Korean War, the Chinese weapons industry had been decimated by the Japanese and they were still in full recovery mode gearing up their industries. Now today I believe most of the weapons that are imported to North Korea are coming from China but during the Korean War it was mostly Soviet supplied weapons. 

We know the Three Kims

We know the three leaders of three Kim's. I have them from the Korean War, Kim Jong-Il and today during the nuclear testing negotiations with Donald Trump we know that he's dealing with Kim Jong-un. So they definitely have their own weapons industry today but back in the 50s, 60s, they were just copying. Their first weapon that they produced was the type 64 which according to Ian in his video he said that's an exact copy or they copied the Browning 1900.

The Features of this Gun

But let's just go over the features of this gun. You can see that it does have a serial number, there's nothing here that would make it distinctly North Korean, except for the grip, it's slightly different than then the Chinese variation and the magazine is bottom release. We see it is numbered on the side and on the bottom but does not match the gun. So other than that there's no distinct markings. Now there's also no import marks which is of note. 

Buy the Gun not the Story

Now you guys write to me and say don't buy this story. Whenever I do a gun with a story you say don't buy the story, buy the gun. Well this is extremely rare, like I said I've never seen one before, I may never see one again. Unless peace breaks out in the Koreas, they're reunited then a lot of these will come to the market. But given the fact that that's not likely to happen anytime soon we may not see another one of these. 

How did this gun get in the US? Good Question!

How did it get in the United States? Well the story is that it surfaced around Washington DC near the CIA headquarters. The story was it was somebody who worked for the CIA who was in Korea in the 70s and he picked it up there as a souvenir and brought it back in the diplomatic pouch. Hard to imagine but it's better than my cruise story and since there's no import marks, there's absolutely no way that this came in to the United States unless it was smuggled in or came in a diplomatic pouch. North Korea is shipping nothing to the United States and we are shipping nothing to them. There's no trade, as you know it's a completely isolated country. So that story actually makes sense. I can't prove it but here is the type 68 North Korean handgun.

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