NORAD reported that the only thing they found from the rocket launch was debris. The opinion was that either the final stage of the rocket destroyed the satellite or that, lo and behold, there never was a satellite. This was just cover for more experimentation in multi-stage rocketry. The satellite story made good sense because the massively more advanced South Korea was busy launching a flotilla of satellites. North Korea was just keeping up with the Joneses, or in this case, the Lees.
Taepodong-2’s unannounced launch in 2006 was also supposed to be carrying a satellite. The 40 second flight of this dud helped prove the primitive nature of North Korean ballistic missile technology, but it still sent a scare through the international community. North Korea’s lack of warning before the launch set a lot of countries on edge, particularly Japan. UN resolutions 1695 and 1718 punished the Stalinist state but evidently had little impact on the continued development of their missile program.
And what do we do? We sit down with North Korea, AGAIN. We fiddle around on goofy little deals with this tin-pot dictator, and for what? They never do what they say they will, and we continue pretending we didn’t notice. The saddest part is that we’re not alone in this whole mess. Russia, China, South Korea and Japan have been repeatedly shown no respect in these talks. Any one of these countries could easily destroy the North Korean state, yet Kim Jong-Il knows none of the parties will actually take a serious hard-line stand against him.
So what can we do? I suggest that we leave them alone. North Korea has repeatedly shown they have no regard for any deal we strike with them, so forget them. Let them fumble around with their primitive weapons program. Let them defy the UN and the warnings of other nations. Let’s see how far they get. If they blow even more money and energy on building a nuclear bomb or an actually reliable ICBM, what the hell can they actually do with it?
