North Korea has launched a total of seven missiles now. Six are the short ranged Scud based missiles, with one failed test of the long-range Taepodong-2.
The missiles apparently fell harmlessly into the Sea of Japan, and U.S. officials said the long-range Taepodong-2 failed shortly after take-off, calling into question the technological capability of North Korea's feared ballistic missile program. Pyongyang last fired a long-range missile in 1998.
But the audacious military exercise drew immediate attention and condemnation. The North American Aerospace Defense Command monitored the launches as they progressed but soon determined they were not a threat to the United States, a spokesman said.
AN emergency meeting of the UN Security Council has been scheduled for today. Nations have protested the launching, but there are indications that the North Koreans are going to launch still more.
North Korea remained defiant. A North Korea foreign ministry official told Japanese journalists in Pyongyang that the regime there has an undeniable right to test missiles.
"The missile launch is an issue that is entirely within our sovereignty. No one has the right to dispute it," Ri Pyong Dok, a researcher on Japanese affairs at the North's Foreign Ministry, said on footage aired by TBS. "On the missile launch, we are not bound by any agreement."
Japanese national broadcaster NHK reported that an unidentified Foreign Ministry official in Pyongyang acknowledged the firing of the missiles, but Ri told reporters that diplomats like himself are unaware of what the military is doing.
Some feared more firings. Pyongyang could test additional missiles soon despite the international furor over Wednesday's launches, Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said after making a protest via telephone to North Korea's ambassador to Canberra, Chon Jae Hong.
"We think they probably do intend to launch more missiles in the next day or two," Downer told reporters, without explaining if the possibility of more tests came up in his talk with Chon.
This is a really dangerous game they are playing.
Parting message-
Giaus, I had sworn off your blog after BlackJack asked me to apologize for criticising his goals for one of the largest big goverment foreign aid programs to come about in my lifetime (the Iraq occupation). Fair enough, I may have been harsh, and I apologized (and haven’t been back since). Mind you his first response to one of my posts here was to call me a left winger and to question my conservative root…very nice. If I was ever coming back, BlackJack could explain how a foreign aid big government program is conservative. How spending a million dollars a minute on foreigners, how helping Sudanese warlords (!) is conservative. But I digress.
I came back because I just had to be sure your posts about North Korea wouldn’t mention the total failure by our administration to keep these launches from happening. To make sure you didn’t mention that our unilateral, non-UN backed invasion of Iraq wasn’t viewed as a provocation to the rest of the world’s dictatators to rush to aquire and develop nuclear weapons. That you might try to spin that the long range missile’s failure as some secret intervention on our part. Though I haven’t checked, I’m sure you’ve poo-pooed North Korea in the past and said it’s “China’s problem.” Welcome to crappy, non-conservative foreign policy decisions Giaus.
Good luck to you; I hope your son comes back home soon and safely.
Jim
Jim,
I don’t agree that the Iraq war goaded dictators into doing anything. I think, rather that the recent political disarray emboldened some of them, if anything.
But all choices here are crappy, I think.
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Actually, North Korea wouldn’t be the problem it is today if Madeline Albright and Co. (this includes former President Clinton) had done their jobs. Alas, they didn’t and now we have this mess on our hands. Kind of reminds me of how President Clinton and Co. and the UN allowed Saddam’s violation of the cease fire agreements to go uncontested. Saddam thumbed his nose at the US and at the member nations of the UN while terrorizing his citizens and starving them to death as he siphoned money through the oil for food program to build his luxurious palaces and to build a weapons arsenal. You know what they say – you reap what you sow and we are paying dearly for eight years of hiding our collective heads in the sand during the Clinton years.
Jim,
I accepted your gracious apology and praised you for it. If you’ve had second thoughts and now wish to retract, I won’t object. Please review the matter and make your decision. But, don’t sulk, it’s unbecoming.
I don’t find much of anything especially conservative about your comments. In fact they seem to march in lockstep with most of the Moonbat nonsense I encounter. If you want to claim conservative roots, you may certainly do so, but in response I must say you keep strange company indeed.
So, if you do decide to continue to address me in your comments, may I request you try to make your points with a bit more clarity, I have every confidence you can do better than the lame gibberish above.