North
Korea launches satellite of
love By Kim Myong Chol
To mark the the 100th anniversary of
founding father Kim Il-sung's birth, the Kim
Jong-eun administration has scheduled the
spectacular launch of an earth observation
satellite that will present the world with a
spatial chorus of The Song of Marshal Kim
Il-sung and Happy Birthday to You.
The Korean Committee for Space Technology
announced on March 16 that the Democratic People's
Republic of Korea (North
Korea) will send
Kwangmyongsong-3, a polar-orbiting satellite, into
space atop a much improved launch vehicle, the
Unha-3. The launch date will fall between April
12-16, with the southerly direction of the launch
from the Sohae (West Sea) Launching Station in
Cholsan County, North Phyongan, in sharp contrast
with easterly direction of two previous satellite
launches.
As an official noted in state
media: "A safe flight orbit has been chosen so
that carrier rocket debris to be generated during
the flight would not have any impact on
neighboring countries."
The satellite
launch is peaceful in every respect, and
indisputably nothing to do with a missile test. It
is a legitimate exercise by the DPRK of its
inalienable sovereign right to peaceful
exploration of outer use, universally shared by
every member of the world community, including the
US, China, Russia, Japan and France. No country,
be it the US, Japan, South Korea, or any other
Western nation, has any right to take issue with
the satellite launch.
The world's youngest
but most sophisticated statesman, Kim Jong-eun,
has ordered the Korean Committee for Space
Technology to invite a bevy of experienced foreign
experts on space science and technology and
journalists to observe the satellite liftoff at
the country's ultra-modern satellite launch
center.
There are two reasons for Kim
Jong-eun's decision: One is to provide the
promised maximum transparency for the launch and
the other is to add to the festive nature of the
celebratory event. Obviously, there is nothing to
conceal about the peaceful satellite launch, which
is anything but a long-range ballistic missile.
For the Korean people, Kim Il-sung was a
sun-like figure and will remain so forever as
Koreans believe they are the offspring of the sun.
Astronomy and star-watching are part and parcel of
a time-honored Korean tradition dating back to the
ancient Korean kingdom of Koguryo.
Kwangmyongsong (Korean for guiding
light or Polar Star) refers to the late Kim
Jong-il. The name was given by the members of the
anti-Japanese guerrilla army when he was born at a
secret camp on snow-covered Mt Paekdu, expressing
their desire that he would grow into a Korean
"King David".
Unha is the Korean
word for the Milky Way, but also refers to present
Supreme Leader Kim Jong-eun as a heaven-sent
statesman set to lead the ancestral Land of
Morning Calm to millennium prosperity.
Pavlov's Dog-like response will spark
nuclear test The reaction of Washington,
Tokyo and Seoul to the planned satellite launch
could be called a Pavlov's dog-like conditioned
response, or at best as that of a deer in the
headlights.
Since the Americans took a
non-hostile stance towards North Korea in the
February 29 DPRK-US nuclear agreement, the first
thing they should do in response to the announced
satellite liftoff is to think twice and readily
extend a gentleman-like warm congratulations to
the North Koreans, as well as state their
readiness to launch a satellite for a rendezvous
flight in outer space.
They might have at
least said, "You resilient and patriotic North
Koreans deserve unreserved praise for being
sticking with Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-il and now
with Kim Jong-eun. You have proved resourceful
enough to build a carrier rocket and satellite,
undeterred by our hostile policy and stringent
sanction. Not to put too fine a point on it, we
feel jealous of Kim Jong-eun."
Any US
threat to invalidate the nuclear deal would only
serve to make the Barack Obama administration look
like a cranky dodo. It will also prompt the Kim
Jong-eun administration to retract its promise to
place a moratorium on nuclear and missile tests,
suspend uranium enrichment, and give international
inspectors access to the uranium enrichment plant.
The hostile response from Washington,
Seoul and Tokyo to the launch comes across to the
North Koreans as a vicious bid to spoil their the
most important and sacred festival of the proud
Korean nation and to weaken their monolithic
cohesion and unity around the new administration
of Kim Jong-eun.
The North Korean reaction
will be prompt, involving additional nuclear tests
and steps to consider a full-blast detonation of a
thermonuclear device possibly in international
waters near the Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans or
in outer space far above the metropolitan US.
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
officials will not be allowed into North Korea any
longer. Uranium enrichment will be resumed and
expanded.
However, the last thing the Kim
Jong-eun administration wants to see is the
"leap-day" DPRK-US nuclear deal imperiled.
The polar-orbiting observation satellite,
blasted into space in the presence of veteran
foreign experts, will beam three messages far and
wide while passing over all the points of the
earth as a bright beacon.
Message One:
Emergence as an economic
power Polar-orbiting Kwangmyongsong-3 will
proudly herald and highlight North Korea as a new
Asian economic tiger and a new member of the elite
club of economic powers.
This event and
the expected completion of a small light-water
reactor can be defined as nothing short of a
miracle, given the more than half-century of naked
animosity with the US and the latter's
criminalizing sanctions, which all have turned out
to be counter-productive.
North Korea is a
long-time member of the two other elite clubs of
space and nuclear powers, and both the satellite
and the heavy-lift carrier rocket were
indigenously designed and assembled with engines
and components built by domestically built complex
multi-spindle machine tools.
Despite its
much-ballyhooed economic success, South Korea is
no closer to building its own satellite launch
vehicles. They have failed miserably in launching
satellites even with the use of imported carrier
rockets from Russia. Most South Korean industrial
products, such as nuclear reactors and TVs, are
dependent on licensed foreign technology and
imported components.
North Korea is one of
the few industrial countries that can domestically
produce supercomputers, hand-held PCs, flat TVs,
smartphones, artillery pieces, tanks, all types of
nuclear warheads, rocket engines and a full array
of radars, portable light-water-reactors, all sets
of sophisticated equipment for industrial plants,
elevators, escalators and a wide range of musical
instruments such as pianos, violins, accordions
∓632,2,720,21table cellSpacing= src= and medical instruments for cardiac surgery.
A few more successful satellite liftoffs
will enable the North Koreans to use its powerful
Unha carrier rockets to launch low-cost satellite
launch services available to any interested client
in the developing and the Western world.
North Korea will be ready to export
low-cost small and portable light-water reactors,
too, complete with a LEU plant to any interested
country.
Message Two: Neutralization of
the US is in sight Regardless of US
beh ID= width= width=nbsp;avior, negative or affirmative, a successful
satellite launch will go a long way towards
neutralizing the US military presence in South
Korea, which is the overriding obstacle to the
negotiated coming together of North and South
Korea under a bi-system reunification framework.
A successful satellite launch and
subsequent US cancellation of the leap-day DPRK-US
nuclear agreement will result in additional known
nuclear and long-range missile testings and
expansion of uranium enrichment operations by
North Korea.
Soon the Americans will
seriously consider asking to leave the Korean
Peninsula on their own accord in an honorable
manner and negotiate a peace treaty with the North
Koreans with a mutual detargeting provision.
It will not be long before the US is
convinced that North Korea has working nuclear
devices and road-mobile, long-range means of
delivery - and that they are not bluffing when
they threaten to vaporize US cities.
Andrei Lankov of Kookmin University,
Seoul, and Adjunct Research Fellow at the
Australian National University, writes in his
March 15 posting at the East Asia forum:
Right now such a deal is
unacceptable to the American side though, as it
looks like rewarding blackmail. Such a
compromise would create a dangerous precedent: a
rogue state will not only be allowed to flout
international law with impunity; it will be
rewarded too. But diplomats seldom face a choice
between acceptable and unacceptable deals. More
often than not, they have to choose between
several unsavory, not to say morally dubious,
options - and the North Korean program will
continue apace if nothing is done. This will
mean more nuclear devices of higher quality, the
development of workable delivery systems and
perhaps even a fully functioning
uranium-production capability - not to mention
the possibility of proliferation.
So,
one might expect that sooner or later the US
side will seriously consider the unconsiderable
and start negotiating nuclear arms limitations,
rather than nuclear arms disarmament. But this
will take time - and perhaps a couple more
nuclear tests, missile launches and some
revelations about proliferation activity in the
Middle East.
The Americans will relent
as North Korea presents a convincingly strong case
for their legitimate sovereign right to peaceful
exploitation of outer space. A net result will be
the withdrawal of US-initiated United Nations
sanctions and US negotiations on a peace treaty
and normalized bilateral relations between the two
long-term adversaries.
Kim Jong-eun is on
track to neutralizing and terminating the US
military presence in South Korea, removing the
foremost barrier to the territorial reintegration
of the ancestral Land of Morning Calm.
Message Three: Beacon of
reunification In its third message,
Kwangmyongsong-3 will serve as a beacon announcing
to the South Korean people and the rest of the
world that Kim Jong-eun has seized the initiative
in paving the honorable exit for the US forces
from the Korean Peninsula and come within striking
distance of having North and South Korea reunited
under a bi-system formula in a peaceful fashion.
The bi-system reunification involves
Pyongyang and Seoul retaining their respective
socio-political and economic systems and conceding
national defense and diplomacy to a federal
government.
The Kim Jong-eun
administration is ready to join hands with anyone
who upholds the two historic documents and work
for a negotiated territorial reintegration of the
ancestral land. Commitment to the two landmark
declarations is a safe guarantee of long-term
prosperity of the Land of Morning Calm.
Any hard-line attempt to confront the
North Korean administration is lost labor. To
expect that North Korea will fall apart under
heavy international pressure is like an attempt to
lasso twinkling stars.
There will be
little doubt left in the eye of the South Korean
people that Kim Jong-eun has what it takes be
another super-Kim Il Sung, as the world's youngest
national leader is about to complete a challenge
of Sisyphean proportions in a creditable way,
taming for once and for all the American military
presence.
Kim Jong-eun, Kim Jong-il and
Kim il-Sung resoundingly outwitted the three US
administrations of Bill Clinton, George W Bush and
Barack Obama. This gave the North a much-needed
pretext to cross into a zone of immunity. Through
diplomatic outmaneuvering, North Korea gained a
total of 20 years, more than enough to wade
through an economic shambles, build affluence and
develop and test thermonuclear weapons and their
intercontinental means of delivery
As
Leonid Petrov, lecturer in Korean studies at the
University of Sydney, said to the Guardian on
March 16, Kim Jong-eun is achieving two goals with
the satellite launch:
"They are trying to
kill two birds with one stone - keeping North
Koreans proud and elated while the US has no
particular reason to protest since inspectors are
going to be admitted to nuclear facilities [under
the recent deal]."
Kim Myong
Chol is author of a number of books and papers
in Korean, Japanese and English on North Korea,
including Kim Jong-il's Strategy for
Reunification. He has a PhD from the Democratic
People's Republic of Korea's Academy of Social
Sciences and is often called an "unofficial"
spokesman of Kim Jong-il and North Korea.
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
