Posted on 04/12/2012 4:42:54 PM PDT by gandalftb
North Korea launched a three-stage rocket from a missile base near the west coast city of Sinuiju today, claiming that it was carrying a weather satellite of purely civilian use.
Its projected trajectory was almost due south on a course 150 miles east of Shanghai. The second stage of the rock was to splash down east of the Philippines, which prompted Manila to cancel northbound flights as a precaution.
Initial network news reports said the rocket failed during flight.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimesblogs.latimes.com ...
The 4th conference of the Workers’ Party of Korea has decided to have great leader Kim Jong Il as the general secretary of the Party forever and elected dear respected Kim Jong Un to the Party’s highest post.
It is the greatest fortune of us, the nation of the Sun, to have at the top post of the Party the great Kim Jong Il, the most prominent theoretician, peerless political veteran and ever- victorious, wise Songun-general, and a man of legend never-known before. It is a sure guarantee for a successful onward march for the prosperity of the country and the happiness of the rising generations to come; it is the biggest luck of us, the nation of the Sun.
http://175.45.176.68/InterEn/index.php?strPageID=SF01_02_01&newsID=2012-04-13-0011
At least they can now blame all errors on the dead Kim Jong Il, and not on young-eun or Jang Song Taek/Kim Kyong-hui.
We should not forget Choe Ryong Hae:
The most eye-catching rise, however, was that of Choe Ryong Hae, a party secretary who became a member of the presidium of the Politburo, said Cheong Seong-chang, a North Korea analyst at the Sejong Institute in Seoul. Choe, who, at 62, is relatively young among the top North Korean leaders, was also made vice chairman of the party’s central military commission.
His rise also showed that the dynastic transfer of power in Pyongyang was not just for the Kim family, but was often for the rest of the elite as well - a factor that analysts in Washington and Seoul often cite to help explain the cohesion of the Kim rule. Choe’s father fought alongside Kim’s grandfather when he led Korean guerrillas during Japanese colonial rule, from 1910 to 1945.
NK is lacking an updated list of their friends, and is manufacturing bogus messages:
calendar April 13. 2012 Juch 101
Russian Party Wishes Korean People Success in Socialist Construction
Pyongyang, April 13 (KCNA) — The Executive Committee of the Party for Peace and Unity of Russia in a statement on April 5 wished the Korean people fresh and good achievements in socialist construction.
http://www.kcna.co.jp/item/2012/201204/news13/20120413-03ee.html
The Party for Peace and Unity of Russia was last seen in 2008 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_of_Peace_and_Unity
However their website http://dppp.su/ is still working but changed to All-Russian Public Movement in support of the policy of the President of the Russian Federation. And this group paid a visit to the NK Embassy April 5 to support NK, very weird.
Is this a typical interior design of an NK embassy? http://dppp.su/index.php?id=1573
It is from their visit April 5.The leader of the party has a blog http://saji_umalatova.livejournal.com/ and she writes that they set up the resurrected Peace and Union Party by breaking out from the old party Feb 13, 2012. I’m not sure if she understands the irony of their name.
Good posts.
Several competing rumors and reports about:
The NORAD data is always approximate, there was a SK AEGIS cruiser that not only had all the tracking from a front row seat, was so close it saw some of the splashdown. That is the source of the SK newsw reports and is reliable.
That area is so shallow that recovery of the debris is certain and there were big chunks that landed intact.
It is fairly certain that the launch occurred unexpectedly. The NK’s may have had an onboard emergency and had to launch (my theory). We know that NK naval vessels were not in place to observe their own launch.
Or another possibility: They may have been hacked. NK has a serious hacker community and have cyber assaulted us many times, all over. If one of their hackers was a double-agent, hmmm. Stuxnet redux.
Russian spy planes fly close to border
Two Russian spy planes approached Japanese airspace on Thursday at a time of high alert in Tokyo over an anticipated ballistic missile launch by North Korea. Air Self-Defense Force planes were put into position after the Russian TU-142 planes looked set to enter Japanese airspace, the Defense Ministry said.
The Russian planes headed south above the Sea of Japan, where a Japanese Aegis destroyer was deployed in preparation for North Korea’s missile launch. The planes flew over the Tsushima Strait between Kyushu and the Korean Peninsula and continued on to the East China Sea., where two Japanese Aegis destroyers were deployed.
The aircraft hovered over the East China Sea for a while before returning to Russia. The planes flew close to Japanese airspace for about nine hours starting at around 8 a.m., according to the ministry.
(Apr. 14, 2012)
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/T120413005320.htm
SK military claims they have not been able to retrieve pieces of debris, having difficulty locating it because the place is very muddy. It may be true but I suspect they are intentionally hiding information on the on-going operation. Premature leak to press may get them in trouble. Initial information tends to be less than accurate and any retraction later could open the military for media attack. Especially left element in SK would make a big fuss out of it. That was certainly the case in Cheonan incident.
Iranian officials observed N. Korea’s rocket launch: source
By Lee Chi-dong
WASHINGTON, April 15 (Yonhap) — A dozen Iranian officials, responsible for the country’s ballistic missile program, visited North Korea last week to observe its latest rocket launch, which ended in failure, a diplomatic source here said Sunday.
“On March 31, 12 Iranians of the Shahid Hemmat Industrial Group (SHIG) arrived in North Korea. The Iranians undoubtedly were there to observe the missile launch and receive test data from North Korea,” the source told Yonhap News Agency, requesting anonymity. South Korean government officials neither confirmed nor denied the allegations, citing a practice of not commenting on intelligence-related matter.
SHIG, connected to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, is a target of U.N and U.S. sanctions. It is known to have developed the Shahab-3, seen as a replica of North Korea’s mid-range Nodong missile using Scud technology, and an upgraded version of Shahab-4 missiles.
North Korea and Iran have long been suspected of regularly exchanging ballistic missile technology.
http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/national/2012/04/15/86/0301000000AEN20120415002200315F.HTML
Pretty crappy sales presentation!!
Perhaps they were engaged in the design?
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