Free Republic

North Korea now has an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capable of delivering a nuclear weapon to the United States, as demonstrated by their successful launch and orbiting of a satellite on Dec. 12. Certain poorly informed pundits among the chattering classes reassure us that North Korea is still years away from being able to miniaturize warheads for missile delivery, and from developing sufficiently accurate missiles to pose a serious nuclear threat to the United States. Philip Yun, director of San Francisco’s Ploughshares Fund, a nuclear disarmament group, reportedly said, “The real threat from the launch was an overreaction that would...

Japanese researchers announced their discovery that the North Korean Taepodong 2 missile that was tested last April, was eight times more accurate than the Taepodong 1 that was tested in 1998. No precise figures were given, but it's likely that accuracy for the Taepodong 2 is several hundred meters (the radius of the circle the missile warhead is likely to land in). North Korea has been working on Taepodong 2 for over a decade. The earlier model Taepodong 1, launched in1998, went about 1,500 kilometers. A 2006 Taepodong 2 test barely got off the ground before crashing. Last Aprils test...