Now three years later they try again and they say it is in orbit.
Which begs the point if they will get caught up in their own lie which they may forget. (They lie so much it must be difficult to keep track of all of them so they dont contract later. There must be a Chief Section, Department of Lies to the Outside World, in KWP headquarters in Pyongyang.
Will they herald this as the FIRST TIME they have but a satellite in orbit(?)! Or will they say this is the second time?
Merits watching.
Sat, 12 Sep 1998 23:54:00 -0400 (EDT)
(found this old item on Google)
On the recent reports (U.S. Senate / U.S. State Department / South Korean
foreign ministry), I wonder if this might be the explanation: The North
Korean rocket was a satellite launch attempt that failed to get anything
into orbit. The launch itself, however, would be desribed as a satellite
launch attempt, and not a ballistic missile test (for whatever difference
that makes). This might be significant in policy analysis and response.
So the report that “it was a satellite launch, but the satellite isn’t
working” really means that the event was an orbital shot but the rocket,
not the payload, failed. This would be consistent with NORAD claiming
nothing in orbit, and if the U.S. really tracked a 3rd stage firing that
was consistent with a launch attempt, that information could have gotten
blurred as it was passed to non-technical people and mixed with the
North Korean description of events. Though I really don’t know, of
course.
— Sean Sullivan