North Korea is on track to launch its Taepodong-2 missile in April. They say it will carry a satellite into orbit, a feat the Communist state claims to have accomplished once before in 1998. The launch of an ICBM by the rouge Korean regime has several countries in an uproar, though no one seems particularly interested in really doing anything to reign in the ultra-secretive Kim Jong-Il.
Japan has stated that they will shoot down anything that passes over their airspace. North Korea informed agencies tied to the UN of two ‘danger zones’ along the missile’s flight path. These zones indicate where stages of the rocket will splash down. One of the sites is very close to Japan. After North Korea fired a Taepodong-1 missile over Japan in 1998 the United States worked very closely with its Japanese ally to place Patriot missile batteries and aegis-equipped destroyers around the island nation. Japan is determined not to be caught by surprise again.
There is the worry that an ICBM will be too high for these interceptors to reach, though.
If the test-firing of the Taepodong-2 is a success the sturm und drang of the isolationist North Korean government will likely be ramped up several notches. Since the Taepodong-2 can theoretically strike targets in the western United States, American diplomats might push for unilateral talks, eschewing the long-running six-way conversation involving China, Russia, South Korea and Japan.
You know what I think about all this?
What a joke.
North Korea’s first firing of the Taepodong-2 in 2006 was a spectacular failure, just like their first detonation of a nuclear device. Congratulations guys, you’ve failed to master technology the United States could build in the 1960s.
In 1998 they claim to have launched a missile that carried the Kwangmyŏngsŏng (“Bright Star”) satellite into earth orbit, but no reliable source was ever able to find the thing in orbit. The Russians say they detected the satellite, but ‘reliable’ isn’t a word I would use when dealing with the Russians and truth.
