In recent months, North Korea has thrown down the gauntlet on the issue of nuclear weapons — and now it is reportedly getting ready to send out a test missile that has the capability of reaching Alaska:
North Korea appears to have completed fueling a long-range ballistic missile, American officials said Sunday, a move that greatly increases the probability that Pyongyang will go ahead with its first important test launch in eight years.
A senior American official said that intelligence from satellite photographs suggested that booster rockets had been loaded onto a launch pad, and liquid-fuel tanks fitted to a missile at a site in North Korea’s remote east coast.
While there have been steady reports in recent days about preparations for a test, fueling is regarded as a critical step as well as a likely bellwether of North Korea’s intentions. Siphoning the liquid fuel out of a missile is believed to be a complex undertaking.
This New York Times’ piece’s reporting is echoed and expanded on in other news reports. Reuters reports:
The test is expected to involve a Taepodong-2 missile with an estimated range of 2,175 to 2,670 miles. At that range, parts of Alaska in the United States would be within reach as well as Asia and Russia.
North Korea lacks an operational missile that can hit the continental United States, the California-based Center for Nonproliferation Studies said in a recent report.
Nonetheless it would be Pyongyang’s first test of a long-range missile since it stunned the world in August 1998 by firing a Taepodong-1 over Japan that landed in the Pacific Ocean.
U.S. officials have watched with alarm as satellite photos showed launch preparations accelerating at the Musudan-ri missile facility in North Hamgyong province in North Korea’s northeast.
Meanwhile, Bloomberg says Japan is watching developments very closely:
Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe said Japan will respond severely should North Korea ignore warnings to call off its reported missile test.
The United Nations Security Council may impose economic sanctions should North Korea carry out the test, Abe, Japan’s top government spokesman, said at a regular press conference.
North Korea late yesterday vowed to boost its “military deterrent” as the U.S. called on the country to uphold its moratorium on missile testing.
The Japan Times has some more info on what sanctions Japan would seek:
Aso said the government could invoke several revised laws that allow sanctions against North Korea.
One provision would freeze cash transfers between the two countries, while another would ban shuttle ferry services between Japanese and North Korean ports.
This would affect the North Korean cargo-ferry Mangyongbong-92, which sails between Niigata and its home port of Wonsan across the Sea of Japan. It is suspected of being used for smuggling of drugs and other banned goods as well as illegal cash transfers.
The sanctions laws are also aimed at pressuring Pyongyang to return Japanese nationals who were abducted by North Korean agents from the late 1970s to the early 1980s.
Aso warned that debris from the missile could come down on Japanese land, but the government would not immediately recognize this as an attack against Japan.
“If they fire two or three (missiles into Japan), the story would of course be different,” Aso said.
In South Korea, the newspaper Chosun blasts its government’s response to North Korean’s missle plans:
Our own government, in the full knowledge that North Korea was building up to test-firing a new missile, has acted in a way that inspires no confidence. It sent North Korea a signal that it is ready to discuss redrawing the Northern Limit Line, the sea extension of the armistice line, and signed an accord to cooperate in the development of the North’s light industries and underground resources. At anniversary celebrations for the June 15, 2000 inter-Korean summit that ended in Gwangju on Saturday, government officials were full of one-nation rhetoric amid anti-American slogans and the calls for a withdrawal of the U.S. Forces Korea from the crowds. During the events, the government is said to have conveyed to the North its “concernsâ€? about the imminent missile launch. We have no way of knowing through what channel the message was conveyed, how firm it was or how attentively the North listened.
A statement from private and public organizations issued at the anniversary celebrations said, “The entire nation, however the surrounding situation may change, should trust and depend on each other and resolve the unification question with the strength of the nation.” That is just another instance of the North’s habitual tactic to bamboozle the South with the unification slogan. But what frame of mind are the government and private organizations in to allow themselves to act as a cheering squad in the face of the present threat?
All of this comes at a time when North Korea has issued another threat to the United States:
North Korea on Sunday threatened to “mercilessly wipe out� US forces in case of war during a national meeting to mark leader Kim Jong-Il’s 42 years’ work at the ruling party. The threat, in a ruling party report carried by the Korean Central News Agency, came as North Korea was reportedly preparing to test-fire a long-range missile despite strong protests from the United States and its allies.
It’s not quite the Cuban Missle Crisis — but clearly it’s a crisis that is rapidly growing.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.