The DPRK are ratching up the rhetoric against South Korea and specifically against hard-line president, Lee Myung Bak, on the first anniversary of his election.
As an anniversary present, the Space Cadets in the DPRK are preparing to send an improved (working?) Taepodong-2 into space.
Oh, and by-the-way, they have 180,000 spec ops forces (up from 120,000) ready to crash the party.
It’s intriging to compare this development with those of the Iranian satellite launch on Feb 2, 2009. Apparently, their hope is that UN sanctions won’t apply to missile launches that are declared to be part of a civilian space program.
More news is trickling out about the recently made public Tongch’ang-dong missile base near Pongdong-ni, North Korea.
Some of the feature upgrades over their older Musudan-ni facility includes a movable launch pad, a 10-story tall tower , a new rocket motor test pad for better reliability testing and more hills for better privacy.
According to AP reports, engine testing occurred several months ago.
According to U.S. government officials, U.S. intelligence has known about this new base for some years. But, it took a report from Jane’s Defense Weekly to publicly reveal the details of the capabilities of the new base.
The timing is curious as it comes at a time of heightened speculation about the leadership in the DPRK and amid a stall in the six-party nuclear disarmament talks.
In what appears to be a response to the North Korean missile threats, Korea Times reports that advanced Patriot missile defence systems from Germany has been deployed at unidentified locations throughout South Korea.
It seems to be the 10th anniversary of the test-firing of a Taepodong-1 which DPRK claims is a satellite rocket launch platform. Here’s the text of the official radio broadcast.
Despite claims of success in the broadcast text, on September 1, 1998, the rocket launch apparently failed and the satellite called Kwangmyŏngsŏng (”Bright Light Star”) has never been seen in orbit.
The satellite appears to have been a clone of a circa 1970 Chinese Dong Fang Hong 1 satellite. Which itself was a clone of a circa 1962 US Telstar satellite.
The launch platform was a Taepodong-1, which is a heavily modified three stage SCUD-based missile.