Embarrassed by Rocket Crash, North Korea Now Planning Nuclear Test

Embarrassed by Rocket Crash, North Korea Now Planning Nuclear Test

North Korea faces world embarrassment after their much hyped long-range rocket launch to celebrate the 100th birthday of the late founding president Kim Il-sung and to mark the rise to power of his grandson Kim Jong-un, failed on Friday.

North Korea is now widely expected to press ahead with its third nuclear test to show its military strength.

"The possibility of an additional long-range rocket launch or a nuclear test, as well as a military provocation to strengthen internal solidarity is very high," a senior South Korean defense ministry official told a parliamentary hearing.

The United States and Japan said the rocket, which they claimed was a disguised missile test, crashed into the sea after travelling a much shorter distance than anticipated.

Its failure brings questions over the impoverished country’s reclusive leadership which has one of the world's largest armies but cannot feed its people without outside aid, largely from China, its only powerful backer.

The North, which still claims success with a 2009 satellite that others labeled as a failure, admitted in a state television broadcast seen by about 23 million people that the latest satellite had not made it into orbit.

The failure is the first major embarrassment for the third of the Kim dynasty to rule North Korea.

Embarrassingly, the rocket flew for just a few minutes covering a little over 100km and exploded over an ocean separating the Korean peninsula and China, far less than the last rocket in 2009 that travelled 3,800km.

The launch, which is a breach of United Nations Security Council sanctions, drew condemnation from the regional powers United States, Japan, Russia and South Korea.

Some powerful countries speculate that the North is using launches to perfect technology for them to be able design a missile capable of delivering a nuclear warhead to the United States.

Posted by James Fried on Saturday April 14 2012, 4:43 AM EDT. Ref: CNN. All trademarks acknowledged. Filed under Featured News, World. Comments and Trackbacks closed. Follow responses: RSS 2.0