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ASSOCIATED PRESS
North Koreans watch an electronic screen announcing the launch of a satellite on Sunday, Feb. 7, 2016, at the Pyongyang Railway Station in Pyongyang, North Korea. North Korea on Sunday defied international warnings and launched a long-range rocket that the United Nations and others call a cover for a banned test of technology for a missile that could strike the U.S. mainland.
SEOUL, South Korea >> North Korea launched a long-range rocket Sunday, the first day of its announced eight-day launch window and about a month after the country’s fourth nuclear test led to international condemnation.
Already, world leaders are lining up to condemn the launch, which is being described as a potential threat to regional and world security.
For help on what it all means, some things to consider about the North’s latest move:
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SATELLITE LAUNCH OR MISSILE TEST?
Washington, Seoul and others consider the launch a banned test of missile technology. That suspicion is based on the fact that Pyongyang has been openly pushing to manufacture nuclear-tipped missiles capable of striking the U.S. mainland and that the technology used to launch a satellite-carrying rocket into space can be applied to fire a long-range missile.
Simply speaking, a rocket is called a space launch vehicle when it is used to send up a satellite into orbit, but it becomes a missile when its payload is a warhead.
Getting a rocket into orbit takes less than 10 minutes. A missile would take about 30 minutes to travel from North Korea to the continental U.S., experts say.
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WHAT’S NEW ABOUT THIS LAUNCH?
After several repeated failures, North Korea successfully put a satellite into orbit aboard its three-stage Unha-3 rocket in December 2012. The North’s space agency said Sunday that it successfully put a new Earth observation satellite, the Kwangmyongsong 4, or Shining Star 4, into orbit less than 10 minutes after liftoff, and vowed more such launches. The United States and South Korea are still analyzing the launch.
South Korean defense officials say that a North Korean missile developed earlier than the Unha-3 rocket of 2012 has an estimated potential range of up to 10,000 kilometers (6,210 miles), which puts Hawaii and the northwest coast of the U.S. mainland within reach.
But critics say the North still has some technical barriers to surmount to achieve reliable nuclear weapons that can attack faraway targets. Among the important tasks facing North Korean scientists are thought to be building up a larger rocket that can fly farther and carry a heavier satellite or payload. This would be necessary if the North is going to develop a missile that can reach the entire U.S. mainland and be loaded with a warhead, which is several times heavier than the satellite the country launched in 2012.
The Unha-3 rocket from 2012 was about 30 meters (98 feet) tall and carried the Kwangmyongsong-3 satellite, which weighed about 100 kilograms (220 pounds). The sizes of the satellite and the rocket used in Sunday’s launch weren’t immediately known.
Outside analysts say the successful flight of a rocket loaded with a satellite weighing about 1 ton (2,200 pounds) would mean the North could probably develop a nuclear-armed long-range missile.
The North has been upgrading its Sohae launch pad since its 2012 launch. Satellite imagery showed the country completed an expansion of its launch tower there in late 2014 to accommodate larger rockets.
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CONSEQUENCES
It’s almost certain that the North will be slapped with fresh U.N. sanctions for the launch.
But critics are skeptical over whether any new sanctions can stop North Korea from continuing to pursue its nuclear and rocket programs because China, North’s last major ally and biggest aid benefactor and a veto-wielding power in the U.N. Security Council, is unwilling to cooperate on any harsh punishment on the North.
Beijing fears too much pressure on the North could cause it to collapse, pushing swarms of refugees over the countries’ border and establishing a unified Korea that hosts American troops on its doorstep.
The launch gives Kim, the North’s young leader, a chance to burnish his image domestically ahead of a landmark ruling Workers’ Party convention in May.
Because the North claims the launch as a success, it may think it has increased leverage in diplomatic negotiations and eventually propose talks with the United States and South Korea to try to win concessions, said Koh Yu-hwan, a professor at Seoul’s Dongguk University.
Now I understand more clearly why China is resistant to increasing pressure on N. Korea.
Too bad the N. Koreans have to suffer such deranged leadership. Hopefully someday that will change…
Reminds me of a naughty kid that refuses to behave. China feels that even though their kid needs a good spanking, it’s still their kid that they love…
Agree. I can understand why China would be concerned about a flood of refugees across the border. North Korea exists upon a very shaky foundation.
That’s hilarious, given the choice I’m sure every north korean would run south to their own people if the NK government fell. Why would any Korean want to go to communist China when they have a democratic Korea? The suggestion that refugees will flood over the chinese border simply defies logic.
We should be negotiating with China to allow Korean reunification and we pull our troops out of the country. The presence of 30K US troops in SK is the only reason China continues to prop up the NK government.
The presence of US troops, below the 38 parallel in the ROK is a trip wire.
DPRK politburo members well know that if our troops are attacked, the surface of their fiefdom can be converted to molten radioactive glass in about a quarter of an hour.
That’s the reason the ‘armistice’ (not a treaty) has held since 1953 – – after President Elect Eisenhower made good his campaign pledge to ‘go to Korea’, where he informed PRC overlords that unless their client state DPRK undertook real negotiations for a cease fire, he was prepared to unleash our nuclear arsenal. And in 1953 that was a very REAL threat we had the means to carry out.
One of us “good guys” shoulda showed our technical superiority and just blasted the shiz outta that toy rocket.
Provocative action although viable is not accepted by restrictive legacy of this peace President. Right after his inauguration he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and he means to stand by the award.
“the Norwegian Nobel Committee specifically invites qualified people to submit nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize
These nominators are:
Members of national assemblies and governments ….
University professors of history, social sciences, philosophy, law, and theology, university presidents, and directors of peace research and international affairs institutes”
Assuming this quote is accurate, it helps to explain the often bizarre choices
Unlike the other prizes, it appears to be largely political, reflecting the population who make the nominations
Case in point..BHO
Doing that would make that “good guys” into a “bad guy”. Nobody or no country can legally go around and shoot whatever they want. We do live in a law and order world.
With respect, better to let the ‘toy’ fly so our intell services can analyze it’s flight characteristics and devise effective means for a vehicle kill in either of three flight regimes: [1] launch phase [2] exo-atmospheric transit [3] terminal (re entry) phase.
I suggest we have more to gain by such intell exploitation than they do with their bragging rights in the world of propaganda.
Fat Boy wants to be taken seriously. Let the Chicoms take care of him. They need a buffer zone between them and S. Korea.
You can thank president Clinton for North Korean’s nukes & soon you can thank president Obama for Iran’s nukes.
You’ve got everything backwards and upside down. Under Clinton, a 30-nation consortium oversaw a freeze on North Korea’s nuclear weapons development. Under Bush, inspectors were pulled out of North Korea and weapons development, that was frozen under Clinton, resumed. Bush was too busy faking intelligence about WMD in Iraq to notice that real WMD development was happening in North Korea. Under Obama, Iran’s breeder reactor has been disabled, enriched plutonium removed from Iran, and nuclear inspectors are back in Iran. When he proposed negotiations to achieve those goals, Republicans criticized Obama for being naive enough to think that they could be achieved. When the 6-nation negotiations produced the results that Republicans said were unachievable, Republicans, suffering from Obama-dreangement-syndrome, criticized him for doing what they wanted — stopping Iran’s nuclear weapons program.
bs you sure are – The North Koreans had a active nuclear program during the second Clinton term uncovered by the CIA while inspectors were still there. What do you bet Iran is doing the same thing right now. As far as weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. What do you think was used to wipe out entire villages of Kurds. Stop spreading your bs.
“Bush was too busy faking intelligence about WMD in Iraq to notice that real WMD development was happening in North Korea.”
That is a stone dead lie.
There’s no negotiating with NK over nukes, Clinton tried and failed most miserably. The best we can do now is contain the “crazy leader” and hope his own people overthrow his government or China comes to their senses and stops propping him up.
Let’s hope Obama hasn’t made the very same mistake with Iran that Clinton made with NK.
NY Times fact checks Ted Cruz for the same bogus claim that you’ve made: “[Cruz] argued that the North Korean launch was a “direct result” of the failures in the Bill Clinton administration, which he said “led the world in relaxing sanctions against North Korea.” Not quite. The 1994 agreement between the Clinton administration and Kim Jong Il — father of the current leader, Kim Jong Un — froze North Korea’s plutonium development in exchange for aid. Plutonium development began again after President George W. Bush’s administration walked away from the deal. (The North did cheat by beginning a uranium program, but that wasn’t covered in the 1994 agreement.)
Most of the North’s development of nuclear weapons accelerated in the Bush era. The first North Korean nuclear test was in 2006.”
“The 1994 agreement between the Clinton administration and Kim Jong Il — father of the current leader, Kim Jong Un — froze North Korea’s plutonium development in exchange for aid.”
Rubbish!
The motto of the DPRK has always been talk while fighting and fight while talking: they have NEVER given up efforts to obtain a nuclear weapon delivery capability. To this end they have played credulous saps like Clinton (and his SecState Madeline non-too-Bright) like marks, especially given their willingness to accept paper “assurances” that were not worth the paper they were printed on.
Bottom line: under Clinton the DPRK got the aid and we (as usual) got the shaft.
Clinton administration negotiated the Agreed Framework with North Korea in 1994, and it was successful in containing North Korea’s nuclear program for eight years. In March 2001, Colin Powell said the Bush administration would pick up where Clinton had left off, but the Bush White House immediately rebuked Powell, pulling the rug out from under him, and forcing him to walk back his position and reject the Agreed Framework. North Korea sought a new round of negotiations, but the Republican administration refused. As Dick Cheney once put it, “We don’t negotiate with evil – we defeat it.” The Republican president instead added North Korea to an “axis of evil.” So, in 2002, North Korea unlocked its fuel rods, kicked out international weapons inspectors, and aggressively pursued a nuclear weapons program. In response, Bush didn’t take military action, he didn’t call for sanctions, nor did he try diplomacy; with fake intelligence about the existence of WMD, he focussed on taking the US into a disastrous war of choice in Iraq.
sanctions will do nothing, got to get China to act.