Airplane over North Korea

The plane has the characteristic grey ghost ahead of it that indicates that this plane is actually flying.

But to heck with the plane. Look behind it and further to the NE. There are a dozen or more white spheres.

The ones furthest to the NE have very clear ground shadows and they have the characteristic grey blur that indicates that they were moving fairly quickly when the image wa shot. Some are very close to the ground if you look at their shadows.

Very odd...

Cool observation. I'll check it out.

I had submitted a similar map awhile back labled "North Korean Aircraft on Hilltop Far From Airstrip." I imagine it was probably in flight also.

You are right! There are clearly shadows to each of the orbs. I had assumed they were just an exposure errors. Great catch! Any guesses as to what they might be?

AnalogMan may know better than me but with this plane flying so close I wonder if these are (1) barage balloons or (2) target ballons.

A quick google of "Korean Barrage Balloons" yeilds many links saying Korea still uses barrage ballons near AAA sites.

There's a very high tower just west of the orbs. Could this be a jump tower and what we are seeing are airborne troops parachuting from the tower. It could explain why some of the orbs are a different altitudes than others, as well as the different sizes (the ones on the ground would have folded in on themselves). However, it wouldn't explain their apparent speed.

If they are parachutes then they are in two sticks. The plane is at the head of the western stick. There is a parallel stick to the east. If they are parachutes then there shouls be another plane out ahead of the second stick.

I was thinking they were being dropped from the tower to the west. However, if that were the case, I don't think they would be as scattered as they are, or able to travel as far as they have.

Your theory of target baloons is interesting. If you follow the path of the plane backwards there are a number of balloons in the flightpath that appear in various stages of deflating.

Here's this plane's wingman:
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=North+Korea&ll=39.878728,125.500549&spn=0.000001,0.000001&t=k&hl=en

They are parachutes you can see some in full deployment and some on the ground .Also if you look in the field you can see a large white arrow which is odd

There is an airstrip near there, maybe it crash landed and was never cleaned up