Hong Kong (CNN) -- Eight months ago, the international community stifled a snigger when North Korea's hyped rocket launch ended with a fizzle.
At the time, Pyongyang
surprised just about everyone by actually admitting its failure, a
departure from previous efforts to project success at all costs.
But this time, they've succeeded.
No one is laughing now.
"The world is not falling
apart, like some would say, but at the same time this is not a joke.
There was a lot of pre-media coverage that said that North Korea was not
good at missile technology and were sort of ridiculing them," said
Philip Yun, executive director of the Ploughshare Fund and a former
adviser to the U.S. government.
"Are we that much less
secure right now?" he asked. "Marginally, but at the same time, this is
something that we have to worry about."
What we know is that just before 10 a.m. local time,
North Korea launched the long-range Unha-3 rocket carrying "the second version of satellite Kwangmyongsong-3" from the Sohae Space Center in Cholsan County in the country's west.
It soared over Okinawa,
dropping debris into the sea off the Korean Peninsula, the East China
Sea and waters near the Philippines, according to the
Japanese government who slammed the launch as "unacceptable."
"The success of the
launch -- which most analysts assume is a clandestine missile test --
brings North Korea one step closer to demonstrating a viable and
reliable long-range delivery vehicle for a nuclear warhead," said
Benjamin Habib, lecturer in Politics and International Relations School
of Social Sciences at La Trobe University.
"If the missile
technology is mastered, the last technical hurdle remaining is
miniaturization of a nuclear warhead that can be deployed on the Unha-3
rocket."
Yun says that's still some way off.
"There's still a lot of
work that needs to be done if they're actually going to mount a nuclear
device or a weapon on a rocket," he said.
"The good news is we
have a fair amount of time. The bad news is that if we're not proactive,
and if we don't figure out a way to curtail North Korea's actions,
they're going to continue to develop and learn more and over the long
term we're going to have to deal with it in a much more difficult
situation," he said.
In the short term, one
analyst said that Wednesday's successful test was likely to encourage
Pyongyang to attempt another nuclear test.
"We don't know if the
one in 2009 was a nuclear device rather than a weapon itself. They might
need additional refinement and testing of a weaponised as well as a
miniaturized version that can fit on a warhead," said Bruce Klingner,
Senior Research Fellow for Northeast Asia in the Asian Studies Center at
The Heritage Foundation.
"More concerning would be an explosion that used a uranium-based warhead because the plutonium program is largely capped.
"We don't think they
have any more available plutonium but the uranium path is really wide
open. So if they have a uranium-based explosion, that will cause a great
deal of concern in the U.S. and its allies that there is an uncapped
nuclear weapons program," he said.
The missile that North
Korea fired Wednesday appeared to be a four-stage rocket based on old
Soviet technology, much less advanced than the rockets being used across
the border in China, said Homer Hickam, a former NASA engineer and the
author of "Rocket Boys."
"What the North Koreas
have done is taken the technology the Russians developed 50 years ago
and upgraded it a little bit and they're trying to use that old
technology to cause a splash in the international scene and to get paid
attention to," he said.
It seems to have worked.
International
condemnation has been building since the launch, which came just days
after North Korea admitted that technical problems could cause a delay.
Multiple theories have been given for the launch's timing, but most
analysts agree that a combination of domestic and international
pressures and priorities came into play.
After the humiliation of
the failed April launch, leader Kim Jong Un was desperate to assert his
leadership credentials, some analysts say. A rocket launch was also
seen as a fitting tribute to mark the one-year anniversary of the death
of his father, former leader Kim Jong Il.
Analysts have also
pointed to the curious timing of the launch which came just days before
national elections in Japan and South Korea, where the candidates'
stance on North Korea is dominating debate in the final days of
campaigning.
Chung Min Lee, Professor
of International Relations, Yonsei University, says the launch was also
designed to send a message to the United States and China. "Kim Jong Un
has told President Obama and Xi Jinping 'I am not going to do business
as usual.' I'll go down this particular path, come what may. This sends a
very negative signal and puts the Chinese into a box. Xi Jinping must
react either way. I believe that the Chinese will be a lot stronger on
North Korea this time than on any other previous occasions," he said.
It's not a view shared by Dean Cheng, research fellow in Chinese Political and Security Affairs at The Heritage Foundation.
"Frankly, I don't expect
very much from Xi," he said. "This new Chinese leadership looks to be
extraordinarily weak in part because of the seven members of the
Politburo Standing Committee, five of them will have to retire by 2017
which means that the jockeying is already underway for the next
succession."
He said the government
is likely to take a "wait-and-see" attitude while the rest of the
international community seeks to exert pressure on North Korea through
the United Nations Security Council.
"If North Korea develops
longer range ballistic missiles, China doesn't think that they'll be
aimed at Beijing. So from China's perspective it has very little
interest or need to come down very hard on North Korea until the U.S.,
Japan and South Korea make it clear to China that allowing North Korea
to do this is going to be more costly than cracking down on them," Cheng
said.
In a statement Wednesday, China's foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei "expressed regret" about the launch.
"China has always
insisted on bringing peace and stability to the Korean Peninsula through
multilateral dialogue. We hope relevant parties stay calm in order to
maintain peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula," he said.
China has traditionally
been a stumbling block in efforts by the international community to
pressure North Korea with sanctions imposed through the U.N. Security
Council, Klingner said.
"When the U.S. and South
Korea went to the U.N. working group after the April launch with a
proposed 40 additional entities, China rejected all but three," he said.
He added that the U.S.'s
ability to convince Beijing to back its efforts on North Korea will be a
real test of U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice, and the
Obama adminstration's policy toward China.
http://edition.cnn.com/2012/12/12/world/asia/north-korea-rocket-launch-analysis/index.html?hpt=hp_c1
