GOING, GOING ...
GONE North
Korean rocket hopes dashed By
Donald Kirk
SEOUL - The failure of North
Korea's Unha 3 missile leaves one great mystery to
which there may never be a definitive answer. The
question is whether or not it was carrying a
weather satellite that the North Koreans had been
saying for weeks would go into orbit in the
interests of "scientific research".
The
rocket plunged into the Yellow Sea little more
than one
minute after liftoff at 7:39
am, Korea time, raising the possibility that
floating debris may give a few clues as to why it
failed and how it was made.
Two South
Korean destroyers, and some smaller craft, were
churning up the waters more than 160 kilometers
off the coast while helicopters and observation
planes criss-crossed the skies, all looking for
odds and ends that would, if nothing else, have a
certain souvenir value. The rocket was to have
been on a trajectory taking it over or near the
southernmost Japanese island prefecture of Okinawa
and past the northern Philippines before landing
in the south Pacific.
The chances of
actually finding the satellite, said to be about
the size of an office filing cabinet, ranged from
minimal to none, however, considering for one
thing that the whole contraption would be too
heavy to float and, for another, that almost
certainly no satellite was on board.
The
North Koreans, though, are putting their own spin
on the story, sticking to the claim that the
missile was carrying a satellite. Four hours after
the Pentagon announced the failure of the rocket,
a female news reader in traditional hanbok
Korean dress announced on North Korea's State TV
network simply that the satellite had failed to go
into orbit. "Scientists, technicians and experts
are looking into the failure," was all she said,
giving no hint the missile had broken up into 20
or so pieces, probably at the point of the first
separation long before it would have launched the
satellite.
United States and South Korean
officials have long believed there's no clue the
missile was carrying a satellite and the whole
purpose was to test a war machine that
theoretically could deliver a nuclear warhead to
the US west coast. North Korea still claims two
previous versions of the missile did launch
satellites, first in August1998, second in April
2009, though scientists around the world say they
have seen no signs of those satellites in orbit.
The presence of foreign journalists in
Pyongyang may have forced North Korea to come up
with the story of the failure of the satellite if
not the rocket. For four hours North Korea did not
announce the launch, leaving the journalists to
get the news of the disaster from calls from their
home offices. Inevitably, they besieged their
North Korean hosts with questions that had somehow
to be answered.
However the North Koreans
paper over the failure, it has to come as a huge
embarrassment during the build-up for massive
celebrations on Sunday marking the 100th
anniversary of the birth of the North's founding
"Great Leader" Kim Il-sung. Rather than explain,
North Korean TV broadcast video footage of scenes
from the life of Kim Il-sung, who led the country
for nearly 50 years before his death in 1994.
North Korea, however, was not expected to
let such a disaster interfere with the celebration
- or to acknowledge during the celebrations that
the space program was anything other than a
tremendous success honoring the legacy of Kim
Il-sung and his son and heir Kim Jong-il, the
"dear leader" who died in December. For North
Korea, projecting the image of "a strong and
prosperous nation" at the birthday bash for Kim
Il-sung, the failure is a glitch, not a
catastrophe.
"They will propagandize it as
scientific achievement," predicted Kim Tae-woo, a
long-time defense analyst and president of the
Korea Institute for National Unification. "They
will say it has been successful. It is propaganda
for their own people."
North Korea was
also sure to remain defiant while the United
Nations Security Council meets to consider how to
respond. The Security Council basically has the
choice of issuing a statement of "condemnation" of
the launch or strengthening sanctions imposed
after North Korea test-fired the earlier version
of the rocket in 2009 and then conducted its
second underground nuclear test six weeks later.
"North Korea will get angry at the action
of the UN and they will use that as an excuse for
another nuclear test," Kim said. Satellite imagery
of excavations in the area of the first two
underground tests, in October 2006 and May 2009,
he said, show "they are preparing for a test."
South Korean sources said the rocket had
fallen into the sea west of Kunsan, a major port
on the southwest South Korean coast. The South
Korean destroyers, both equipped with the latest
Aegis radar and ship-to-air missile systems, were
already patrolling the waters, prepared to fire at
portions of the missile if it seemed they might
land on South Korean territory.
Although
the US has a major air base at Kunsan, a US
military spokesman said there was no sign US
planes or ships would join in the search for
pieces of the rocket. It seemed more than likely,
however, that US ships and planes would eventually
have to join the search considering how often and
readily they leave nearby bases in Korea as well
as Japan on regular military exercises.
But will North Korea want to carry on with
the program in view of the tremendous costs and
near universal international criticism?
Russia and China may not want to
strengthen sanctions, which neither of them has
enforced, but they're likely at least to join in
pro forma condemnation by the UN Security Council.
The Russian ambassador has already agreed
the launch of the rocket was in clear violation of
sanctions imposed in June 2009 after the nuclear
explosion. China, the source of almost all North
Korea's fuel and much of its food, presumably
views the North Korean program as undermining the
"peace and stability" that it wants to preserve
over the Korean peninsula. China, after all, is
South Korea's biggest trading partner.
Kim
Tae-woo believes North Korea is committed to
developing missiles and nuclear weapons partly to
prove the power of the country's new leader, Kim
Jong-un, the kid, in his late 20s, who took over
after his father, Kim Jong-il, the son of Kim
Il-sung, died in December. "What they are
concerned about is not to improve the quality of
life of their people," he said, "but to
consolidate behind Kim Jong-eun."
Under
the circumstances, violation of the moratorium on
nuclear and missile tests as agreed on by US and
North Korean negotiators on February 29 was
irrelevant. What mattered, said Paek Chang-ho,
head of what was called the "satellite control
center," was that the late North Korean leader Kim
Jong-il had personally ordered and fostered the
North's space program before his death. In the
months since then, Kim Jong-eun has appointed
senior military officers with backgrounds in the
North's nuclear program to senior positions.
At the same time, Kim Jong-eun has
solidified his position with his elevation as
first secretary of the Workers' Party and chairman
of its central military commission.
The
praise heaped on him at the party conference this
week suggested his importance in perpetuating the
songun or "military first" policy
enunciated by his father.
He represents
"the center of unity of the Workers' Party and the
revolution," said 86-year-old Kim Yong-nam,
chairman of the Supreme People's Assembly, hailing
him as "the center of the leadership as well as
the banner of all victories and glory of
songun."
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