On Mon, 28 Aug 2017 08:41:34 -0700 (PDT),
wrote:

On Thursday, August 24, 2017 at 3:42:27 PM UTC-7, Ed Huntress wrote:
If you're interested in this story, it may be in print somewhere, but
it's also in this podcast that you can listen to online, with no
add-on apps:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/24/p...s-ukraine.html

Hint: They didn't do it themselves.

--
Ed Huntress

Hi Ed,
It is equally likely that they came from Samara.
They are based on Sergey Korolyov's closed cycle hardware design.
Sixty of them ended up in a warehouse and have been sold off over the years to various interested parties, including the one I saw run at Aerojet in the 90's.
Those were for the N30 done at OKB-1.
RD 180's are the same design.
Bob Ford from Lockheed and Bill Hoffman from Aerojet spent time finding this stuff as part of a team of Americans sent to Russia after the USSR dissolved.
Energomash builds and sells the RD 180 for use in America's heavy lift launch vehicles.
We build the bus but they supply the engines/motors.

Take Care

One way or another, it appears that the North Koreans failed
consistently when they tried to build their own motors, but suddenly
started having success -- with much more challenging rockets -- when
they switched to the Russian design.

--
Ed Huntress