North Korea launches rocket

[Dalton]

White House to issue statement

PYONGYANG, North Korea -- North Korea launched a long-range rocket early Friday, U.S. officials confirmed.
The White House said it would issue a statement, NBC News reported.
The launch, which North Korea's neighbors and the West say is a disguised ballistic missile test, will take a three-stage rocket over a sea separating the Korean peninsula from China before releasing a weather satellite into orbit when the third stage fires over waters near the Philippines.
Regional powers also worry it could be the prelude to another nuclear test, a pattern the hermit state set in 2009.
The South Korean Defense Ministry announced that North Korea fired the long range rocket around Friday morning around 7:38 a.m. and the success of the launch was being tracked by the joint military of South Korea and United States.

Kim Jong-Un seems eager to continue in his father's footsteps.

[Flagg]

I imagine their next step will be to offer not to test a third nuke in exchange for more food aid.

[Dalton]

Update: The rocket "broke up" soon after takeoff according to US officials.

[Flagg]

Hopefully the North Koreans won't try and claim it was shot down or the shit is likely to hit the fan.

[TimothyC]

Hopefully the North Koreans won't try and claim it was shot down or the shit is likely to hit the fan.

Historical precedent would tend toward the "It's up there, but none of you can see it."

[Sea Skimmer]

It’s pretty simple, they'll broadcast the propaganda songs over normal radio stations in bursts to simulate an orbit like they did last time, tell all the North Korean civilians to tune into the specified channel and everyone dances in the streets over the great science victory for Eternal President Kim Il Sung! Doesn’t matter what the Imperialists actually think. North Korean civilians meanwhile have no means of verifying the actual origin of the broadcasts because the required radio equipment is illegal under penalty of execution.

Plus it didn’t explode on the pad, so something half worked. If it blew up on the pad, that would be when they'd declare it was Imperialist Yankee Puppet Stooge Spy Aggression.

[Eulogy]

On the bright side, every fuckup they suffer will speed the inevitable collapse of North Korea.

[FSTargetDrone]

Plus it didn’t explode on the pad, so something half worked. If it blew up on the pad, that would be when they'd declare it was Imperialist Yankee Puppet Stooge Spy Aggression.

Which is more politically unpalatable to the North Korean leadership, admitting that there was a technical fault (potentially leading to the public perception that their engineers are not perfect) or stating that a foreign agent was actually able to breach the defenses of the country and sabotage the rocket (implying that the nation's security services are fallible)?

[Purple]

The later is easily palatable. After all, it is a confirmation that the big bad west really is out to get you more than ever. It is a confirmation that all the austerity, all the sacrifices are not in vain. A reminder that the wolf truly is at the door and that it's only through the wisdom of the great leader that you are safe. Its a miracle what a bit of propaganda can spin out of something like that.

[Sea Skimmer]

Which is more politically unpalatable to the North Korean leadership, admitting that there was a technical fault (potentially leading to the public perception that their engineers are not perfect) or stating that a foreign agent was actually able to breach the defenses of the country and sabotage the rocket (implying that the nation's security services are fallible)?

Admitting the engineering failure would be far more substantial, it would suggest something is wrong with the peoples democratic republic as a whole. Imperialist spies meanwhile are an ever present threat and it would be easy enough to arrest several of the guards and execute them for having facilitated the sabotage. This could actually be turned into a political advantage proving just how grave the threat is to the great successors plans and why everyone needs to keep eating grass; depending on just how zombified North Koreans really are

[eion]

Looks like a failure on staging. Rather common for inexperienced rocket builders. A good sign that the North Koreans are still a long way from an ICBM.

[Sephirius]

I guess the the new leader's Unha wasn't as ridgid as their previous leader's Dongs, and its flaccidity resulted in premature breakup when it tried to penetrate the atmosphere.

(sorry, It's what I got.)

[Sea Skimmer]

Amazing, it seems the North Koreans are actually admitting it failed, or at least that the satellite did not enter orbit. Maybe they decided it was just too high profile to bullshit on? It also seems it blew up after just 1-2 minutes, when it would still possibly be visible to people on the ground in southern North Korea so they'd be taking a risk declaring a fake success.

[Simon_Jester]

Amazing, it seems the North Koreans are actually admitting it failed, or at least that the satellite did not enter orbit. Maybe they decided it was just too high profile to bullshit on? It also seems it blew up after just 1-2 minutes, when it would still possibly be visible to people on the ground in southern North Korea so they'd be taking a risk declaring a fake success.

Are they admitting failure for internal public consumption? Wow. That... the only explanation for that I can buy is that they think people might have seen it fail, like you said.

I guess the the new leader's Unha wasn't as ridgid as their previous leader's Dongs, and its flaccidity resulted in premature breakup when it tried to penetrate the atmosphere.

(sorry, It's what I got.)

You should see that one picture of a failed Atlas rocket...

[K. A. Pital]

So much glee over a dirt-poor nation failing to launch a space rocket with a satellite?

As an aside, Kim Jong-Un reportedly told his officials that the DPRK should "offer its citizens an abudance of consumer goods" and "not be afraid of capitalism". Like I said before, I don't think Jong Un is clinging to the Juche ideas since it's easily seen now they aren't working. The DPRK can't launch it's own rocket.

A sad reminder for those who glee over the rocket failure: do you really wish to see a round of repressions against DPRK's rocket scientists? Because that's all too common a response from poor dictatorial nations towards failures in science. Wouldn't it be better if the satellite actually reached orbit?

And finally, no nation may prohibit rocket launches with non-military cargo to another nation. I don't give two shits on how "dual-purpose" this technology is.

[Simon_Jester]

So much glee over a dirt-poor nation failing to launch a space rocket with a satellite?

They are seeking to acquire the ability to drop nuclear warheads on some of my friends. I don't think I, for one, am being more gleeful than the situation deserves.

I can't speak for anyone else.

[K. A. Pital]

Well, I wasn't speaking about you Simon.

And are they really? I mean, they already have nukes (1) and can drop them on Seoul (2). That's more than enough for deterrent. I thought that the launch of a non-militarized crude satellite clearly intended as a propaganda feat is just that.

Sometimes I wonder if the paranoia of Soviet planners who saw the Space Shuttle (which Americans are so proud of as their civilian "spaceplane" thing, featured in countless movies about brave space explorers) as nothing but a deadly weapon meant to take Moscow out in 10 minutes, is actually being mirrored here. Launching a satellite - even for pure propaganda - is not equivalent to dropping bombs on somebody.

Did people also think that Iran launching their "Omid" satellite for propaganda purposes probably meant Iran wanted to drop something nuclear on their head?

[Grumman]

A sad reminder for those who glee over the rocket failure: do you really wish to see a round of repressions against DPRK's rocket scientists? Because that's all too common a response from poor dictatorial nations towards failures in science. Wouldn't it be better if the satellite actually reached orbit?

I'm pretty sure the answer to that is "Hell no!" It sucks for those scientists, but the North Korean government getting what they want - a PR victory and the ability to build rockets that can carry a payload with effectively infinite range - would only prolong their reign and the suffering of the North Korean people.

[Simon_Jester]

Well, I wasn't speaking about you Simon.

And are they really? I mean, they already have nukes (1) and can drop them on Seoul (2). That's more than enough for deterrent. I thought that the launch of a non-militarized crude satellite clearly intended as a propaganda feat is just that.

Sometimes I wonder if the paranoia of Soviet planners who saw the Space Shuttle (which Americans are so proud of as their civilian "spaceplane" thing, featured in countless movies about brave space explorers) as nothing but a deadly weapon meant to take Moscow out in 10 minutes, is actually being mirrored here. Launching a satellite - even for pure propaganda - is not equivalent to dropping bombs on somebody.

Did people also think that Iran launching their "Omid" satellite for propaganda purposes probably meant Iran wanted to drop something nuclear on their head?

Since the North Koreans have openly tested IRBMs with the range to do pretty much what I describe, I don't think the mirroring is entirely unjustified.

Also, it's a simple fact that the major satellite-launching powers' early satellite launches were done with hardware intended for, and as capability tests for, nuclear missile launches: Jupiter, R-7, and so on. I assume the North Koreans are just as efficient about such things, just as capable of hitting two birds with one stone, and the US or USSR was in the 1950s.

I'm equally sure the Iranians, once they get the technology worked out, will mate their satellite booster technology with their nuclear bomb technology* to get ICBMs. From my point of view they'd be fools not to, since one of the powers they seek to deter is on the other side of the world. Likewise for North Korea. If you want to deter the US, you need a weapon that can reach the US, because you can't count on them successfully being deterred by "if you don't do as we say, we'll blow up someone else's land."

This doesn't require the North Koreans, or the Iranians, to be in any way unusually 'evil' or militaristic or dangerous. It just requires them to be people the same as anyone else.

*Since I oppose war with Iran, I don't really expect to be able to persuade the Iranians not to build nuclear weapons, you see...

[K. A. Pital]

I'm pretty sure the answer to that is "Hell no!" It sucks for those scientists, but the North Korean government getting what they want - a PR victory and the ability to build rockets that can carry a payload with effectively infinite range - would only prolong their reign and the suffering of the North Korean people.

Building a rocket doesn't prolong their reign. Having a good harvest does. By logic, you should be starving them, not stopping them from wasting their already limited resources on rockets. But then, as we saw with Cuba, an embargo isn't really doing anything except hurting the entire population.

Like I said, the best solution to the DPRK issue is just giving them shitloads of everything so that the rulers can softly initiate reform without fearing of being torn apart by their own population.

But of course hostility and mutual distrust works better! It worked nice with Cuba, Iran and Iraq, right?

[Sea Skimmer]

The US and ROK offered them millions of tons of fuel, hundreds of thousands of tons of food and two entire nuclear power plants with fuel if they'd just not work on nuclear weapons and they broke that deal massively. A new deal for a quarter million tons of food in exchange simply for obeying existing UN resolutions a month ago was broken by this test, in a move clearly calculated to spread mistrust and generally keep up North Korea's reputation for being unpredictable. Yeah its totally change they want. Give them everything with no strings attached and they'd have no damn reason to reform in the first place. Now work on a peace treaty, that might be able to go somewhere.

[K. A. Pital]

Give them everything with no strings attached and they'd have no damn reason to reform in the first place.

Such systems usually reform because of internal initiative, not external pressure. That's a lesson which people must learn.

[Sea Skimmer]

They've had twenty years to reform since the USSR free money giveaway ended and they let a million people starve before asking for help. Meanwhile they've been offered unprecedented aid from the west even the USSR would never have offered, and rejected it in favor of deliberately increasing pressure time and again. Did you miss the fact that they’ve been more violent in the last several years then since the late 1960s? It makes no damn sense at all to prop up such a system that acts out to generate foreign pressure when the outside world doesn’t want it. Meanwhile on the ROK side armed forces have been cut, US troops reduced and shifted away, plans were in place for the US to give up command of UN forces in Korea until the North blew up some stuff ect…

You want them to reform from the inside, then it makes no damn sense to actively facilitate them maintaining the current state of affairs with no return. Let them rot in the mess they made and work out a solution. In any case, maybe you should remember that some systems, indeed many are incapable of reform without a revolution. If that's going to happen in North Korea some day, the fewer nuclear weapons and missiles they have the better. You really have to wonder what the North would be like now if they'd had to solve the famine through personal initiative in the first place.

[K. A. Pital]

Don't make agreements, just pour aid regardless of what they do. Then they lose the Pavlov stimuli "more threats from us = more aid for us".

They actually solved the famine through "private initiative" - the DPRK has cutthroat dejure-illegal, de-facto supported by the KWP, businessmen selling out DPRK labour out to Russia, using lumber mills, etc. The mega-markets under Pyongyang and the emergence of a below dark economy which essentially overtook the government one (which no longer functions oustide heavy industry and exists by using levies on factories that run to make cheap stuff for abroad, e.g. wood, medicines, etc.) are well documented.

You want them to go further? As I heard, Kim Jong Un had a meeting after the rocket failure that there should be "no fear" in discussing reform.

Why now start whining about how the DPRK can't launch shouldn't launch stop launching? If one'd say "sorry that your satellite was a flop", that'd look much more mature, heh. You can't stop them from constructing rockets short of a massive invasion (infeasible, they have nukes), so why bother with the empty threats?

[Sea Skimmer]

Don't make agreements, just pour aid regardless of what they do. Then they lose the Pavlov stimuli "more threats from us = more aid for us".

Unlimited appeasement is just stupid, as well as expensive. The world track record for bribing dictatorships into behaving is a very poor one. You are also completely ignoring the fact that they loose the stimuli all the same if we simply give them no aid no matter what they do, except exactly what we want. None of the recent provocations have gotten them any aid.

They actually solved the famine through "private initiative" - the DPRK has cutthroat dejure-illegal, de-facto supported by the KWP, businessmen selling out DPRK labour out to Russia, using lumber mills, etc. The mega-markets under Pyongyang and the emergence of a below dark economy which essentially overtook the government one (which no longer functions oustide heavy industry and exists by using levies on factories that run to make cheap stuff for abroad, e.g. wood, medicines, etc.) are well documented.

The fact that they still want food aid and the World Food Program, the only independent group able to take any real survey of the health of the population, says they need major aid and have massive malnutrition. They've made some progress feeding themselves in that the problem is now a whole generation of malnourished people instead of dead people, but a lot of that was from the gravity irrigation canal system constructed over the past decade. But now that that's done, they don't have a lot of options to go further without a lot more money to import the huge amounts of fertilizer they used to get from the USSR.

You want them to go further? As I heard, Kim Jong Un had a meeting after the rocket failure that there should be "no fear" in discussing reform.

Well then let them actually do it, by themselves. I thought you favor non interference in international relations anyway?

Why now start whining about how the DPRK can't launch shouldn't launch stop launching? If one'd say "sorry that your satellite was a flop", that'd look much more mature, heh. You can't stop them from constructing rockets short of a massive invasion (infeasible, they have nukes), so why bother with the empty threats?

Just because we can't physically stop it without an attack doesn't mean we should turn around and actively subsidize it which is exactly what you propose. Though it would work perfectly well in terms of crippling the NK rocket program to shoot down anything they fire that's bigger then a SCUD-D. If you think NOrth Korea would use nuclear weapons after the US or ROK did this, then you'd have to be completely insane to think they should get a drop of aid. You also should stop acting like complaints on North Korean rocket launches started a week ago, this is completely false.