North Korea rocket launch: Why Kim failed the test

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North Korea rocket launch: Why Kim failed the test

North Korea's failed rocket launch symbolizes the inefficacy of Pyongyang's economic and political system and the crash of brief hopes that the new Kim regime might lead to rapprochement with South Korea and the United States.

By Denny Roy / April 13, 2012

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South Koreans look toward North Korea at the Unification Observatory, near the demilitarized zone north of Seoul, April 13. North Korea is likely to stage a military provocation against the South following its failed long-range rocket launch on Friday, a senior South Korean defense ministry official said. Op-ed contributor Denny Roy says 'the rocket launch was not only a technical failure for North Korea, but also a profound failure of political vision.'

Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters

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What the North Koreans intended as a long-range, three-stage rocket flight sputtered ignominiously when the rocket broke apart and fell into the Yellow Sea less than two minutes after its launch yesterday. The regime in Pyongyang claims the rocket was supposed to place a satellite into orbit to celebrate the 100th birthday of North Korea’s deified former leader Kim Il Sung.

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Instead, the failed launch symbolized the inefficacy of North Korea’s economic and political system and the crash of brief hopes that the recent change in the country’s leadership might lead to rapprochement with South Korea and the United States.

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) rocket launch also kills the short-lived Feb. 29 agreement in which the US government promised a quarter of a million tons of “nutritional assistance” (foodstuffs not likely to be diverted to the North Korean military) if the North Koreans would temporarily curtail some aspects of their missile and nuclear weapons programs.

THE MONITOR'S VIEW: North Korea rocket launch: fireworks of fear

Many observers saw this agreement as a test of the possibility that new ruler Kim Jung Un might take a different path than his father: seeking North Korean prosperity and security by trading away the nuclear weapons program in exchange for an improved political relationship and expanded economic cooperation with Pyongyang’s avowed enemies. Mr. Kim failed that test.

This episode also tarnished Beijing, which managed once again to appear both devious and useless. The Chinese seem capable and willing when it comes to sheltering North Korea diplomatically and economically from the consequences of poor international citizenship. China consistently tries to bargain down United Nations Security Council sanctions against Pyongyang and then undercuts those sanctions through deepening trade with and investment in the DPRK.

On the other hand, however, China lacks either the capability or the willingness to persuade North Korea not to carry out frightening acts such as missile launches and nuclear weapons tests.

Clearly, the biggest loser is the Kim Jong Un regime. Kim has been plagued by doubts about his leadership capabilities since taking the place of his deceased father as paramount leader in the last days of 2011. The curious sequence of events leading up to the rocket launch, which seemed to indicate a lack of coordination between competing domestic agendas, raised questions about the Kim government’s ability to pursue a coherent foreign policy.

First, Kim threw away the Feb. 29 American offer of food aid. And then Pyongyang’s announcement of an impending rocket launch contributed to a surprise victory on Apr. 11 in South Korea’s legislative elections by the conservative ruling coalition, which takes a tougher line on North Korea than the main opposition party.

The botched launch is a huge embarrassment to the regime. A young man in a culture that reveres age and experience, a hastily proclaimed four-star general with no military experience – Kim’s sole qualification is that he is the grandson of Kim Il Sung and the son of Kim Jong Il.

This makes him useful as a legitimizing front man for the cabal of his father’s relatives and trusted friends that really runs the country. But if, however, there is a subterranean leadership struggle, Kim Jong Un’s failure to properly honor his grandfather with the rocket launch will not strengthen his mandate to rule the country.

DPRK propaganda can claim Washington is the villain in this scenario because the Americans reneged on the Feb. 29 agreement. However, this argument will hardly overturn widespread global sentiment that the Pyongyang regime is despicable and dangerous.

OPINION: Kim Jong-il's death: Don't look for swift change in North Korea 

Pyongyang has argued that yesterday’s launch involved a civilian rocket, not a ballistic missile (forbidden by a 2009 UN Security Council resolution). Only a few observers bought that argument. The United States and many other governments took the position that the satellite launch was tantamount to a missile test. Even Russia, which has been almost as soft on Pyongyang as China, had called on North Korea not to go ahead with the launch.

After a period of provocations in 2010, Pyongyang made clear in 2011 its desire to resume negotiations with the US, although most analysts suspected the objective was to press for more concessions (such as economic handouts and recognition as a nuclear weapons state) and not to bargain away its nuclear weapons program. The unsuccessful launch increases the chances that Pyongyang will return to its provocation mode.

The American sense is that the North Koreans have just exhibited extraordinarily bad faith by concluding an agreement they planned to sabotage a few days later. Instead of a fresh start with a new leader, it appears that Kim Jong Il is still making North Korean policy from the grave.

This will slow meaningful US-North Korea re-engagement, especially with the Obama administration’s desire to avoid a new foreign policy gaffe (such as appearing soft or naive) before the US elections.

But the failure of the rocket is also a setback to North Korea’s effort to gain a credible deterrent against US or South Korean attack by deploying nuclear-armed ballistic missiles.

This third DPRK attempt at a multi-stage rocket flight follows similar failures in 1998 and 2009. The leadership in Pyongyang may fear that adversaries will see this high-profile bust as a sign of weakness, prompting the regime to compensate for this increased vulnerability with an intimidating show of strength.

OPINION: A new Kim in North Korea requires even more US deterrence

The rocket launch was not only a technical failure for North Korea, but also a profound failure of political vision. Thus far the reign of Kim Jong Un seems to spell continued misery for the North Korean people and peril for their neighbors.

Denny Roy is a senior fellow at the East-West Center. A specialist in Asia-Pacific security issues, Mr. Roy is working on a book about the impact of China's rise on regional security.

http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2012/0413/North-Korea-rocket-launch-Why-Kim-failed-the-test/(page)/2

GOING, GOING ... GONE
North Korean rocket hopes dashed
By Donald Kirk

SEOUL - The failure of North Korea's Unha 3 missile leaves one great mystery to which there may never be a definitive answer. The question is whether or not it was carrying a weather satellite that the North Koreans had been saying for weeks would go into orbit in the interests of "scientific research".

The rocket plunged into the Yellow Sea little more than one

minute after liftoff at 7:39 am, Korea time, raising the possibility that floating debris may give a few clues as to why it failed and how it was made.

Two South Korean destroyers, and some smaller craft, were churning up the waters more than 160 kilometers off the coast while helicopters and observation planes criss-crossed the skies, all looking for odds and ends that would, if nothing else, have a certain souvenir value. The rocket was to have been on a trajectory taking it over or near the southernmost Japanese island prefecture of Okinawa and past the northern Philippines before landing in the south Pacific.

The chances of actually finding the satellite, said to be about the size of an office filing cabinet, ranged from minimal to none, however, considering for one thing that the whole contraption would be too heavy to float and, for another, that almost certainly no satellite was on board.

The North Koreans, though, are putting their own spin on the story, sticking to the claim that the missile was carrying a satellite. Four hours after the Pentagon announced the failure of the rocket, a female news reader in traditional hanbok Korean dress announced on North Korea's State TV network simply that the satellite had failed to go into orbit. "Scientists, technicians and experts are looking into the failure," was all she said, giving no hint the missile had broken up into 20 or so pieces, probably at the point of the first separation long before it would have launched the satellite.

United States and South Korean officials have long believed there's no clue the missile was carrying a satellite and the whole purpose was to test a war machine that theoretically could deliver a nuclear warhead to the US west coast. North Korea still claims two previous versions of the missile did launch satellites, first in August1998, second in April 2009, though scientists around the world say they have seen no signs of those satellites in orbit.

The presence of foreign journalists in Pyongyang may have forced North Korea to come up with the story of the failure of the satellite if not the rocket. For four hours North Korea did not announce the launch, leaving the journalists to get the news of the disaster from calls from their home offices. Inevitably, they besieged their North Korean hosts with questions that had somehow to be answered.

However the North Koreans paper over the failure, it has to come as a huge embarrassment during the build-up for massive celebrations on Sunday marking the 100th anniversary of the birth of the North's founding "Great Leader" Kim Il-sung. Rather than explain, North Korean TV broadcast video footage of scenes from the life of Kim Il-sung, who led the country for nearly 50 years before his death in 1994.

North Korea, however, was not expected to let such a disaster interfere with the celebration - or to acknowledge during the celebrations that the space program was anything other than a tremendous success honoring the legacy of Kim Il-sung and his son and heir Kim Jong-il, the "dear leader" who died in December. For North Korea, projecting the image of "a strong and prosperous nation" at the birthday bash for Kim Il-sung, the failure is a glitch, not a catastrophe.

"They will propagandize it as scientific achievement," predicted Kim Tae-woo, a long-time defense analyst and president of the Korea Institute for National Unification. "They will say it has been successful. It is propaganda for their own people."

North Korea was also sure to remain defiant while the United Nations Security Council meets to consider how to respond. The Security Council basically has the choice of issuing a statement of "condemnation" of the launch or strengthening sanctions imposed after North Korea test-fired the earlier version of the rocket in 2009 and then conducted its second underground nuclear test six weeks later.

"North Korea will get angry at the action of the UN and they will use that as an excuse for another nuclear test," Kim said. Satellite imagery of excavations in the area of the first two underground tests, in October 2006 and May 2009, he said, show "they are preparing for a test."

South Korean sources said the rocket had fallen into the sea west of Kunsan, a major port on the southwest South Korean coast. The South Korean destroyers, both equipped with the latest Aegis radar and ship-to-air missile systems, were already patrolling the waters, prepared to fire at portions of the missile if it seemed they might land on South Korean territory.

Although the US has a major air base at Kunsan, a US military spokesman said there was no sign US planes or ships would join in the search for pieces of the rocket. It seemed more than likely, however, that US ships and planes would eventually have to join the search considering how often and readily they leave nearby bases in Korea as well as Japan on regular military exercises.

But will North Korea want to carry on with the program in view of the tremendous costs and near universal international criticism?

Russia and China may not want to strengthen sanctions, which neither of them has enforced, but they're likely at least to join in pro forma condemnation by the UN Security Council.

The Russian ambassador has already agreed the launch of the rocket was in clear violation of sanctions imposed in June 2009 after the nuclear explosion. China, the source of almost all North Korea's fuel and much of its food, presumably views the North Korean program as undermining the "peace and stability" that it wants to preserve over the Korean peninsula. China, after all, is South Korea's biggest trading partner.

Kim Tae-woo believes North Korea is committed to developing missiles and nuclear weapons partly to prove the power of the country's new leader, Kim Jong-un, the kid, in his late 20s, who took over after his father, Kim Jong-il, the son of Kim Il-sung, died in December. "What they are concerned about is not to improve the quality of life of their people," he said, "but to consolidate behind Kim Jong-eun."

Under the circumstances, violation of the moratorium on nuclear and missile tests as agreed on by US and North Korean negotiators on February 29 was irrelevant. What mattered, said Paek Chang-ho, head of what was called the "satellite control center," was that the late North Korean leader Kim Jong-il had personally ordered and fostered the North's space program before his death. In the months since then, Kim Jong-eun has appointed senior military officers with backgrounds in the North's nuclear program to senior positions.

At the same time, Kim Jong-eun has solidified his position with his elevation as first secretary of the Workers' Party and chairman of its central military commission.

The praise heaped on him at the party conference this week suggested his importance in perpetuating the songun or "military first" policy enunciated by his father.

He represents "the center of unity of the Workers' Party and the revolution," said 86-year-old Kim Yong-nam, chairman of the Supreme People's Assembly, hailing him as "the center of the leadership as well as the banner of all victories and glory of songun."

Donald Kirk, a long-time journalist in Asia, is author of the newly published Korea Betrayed: Kim Dae Jung and Sunshine.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Korea/ND14Dg02.html