Why not to worry about North Korea's missile test

Sorry but I’m having a little trouble getting as worked up about this possible North Korean missile test as some people are, since North Korea has been threatening to launch this thing for the past two months. It’s starting to sound like the stereotypical cranky dad driving on a long roadtrip who turns to his misbehaving kids and yells, “if you don’t knock it off, I’m pulling this car over…I’m serious this time…I’ll pull over and then you’ll be sorry…just keep it up and I’ll do it…”

The thought of North Korea, the secretive Stalinist state led by the odd Kim Jong-Il, possessing a missile that could reach the United States is a scary idea – the reality of the situation though, isn’t. The Taepodong-2 missile failed in its first, and so far only test, and getting the missile ready for launch has already taken the North Koreans two months – not exactly something you can fire off in a surprise attack.

That’s not to say there isn’t a lot of tension surrounding North Korea these days. Last year, the world thought for awhile that Kim Jong-Il was dead though now it’s widely believed that he had a stroke and spent months recuperating; there’s now talk of a struggle among North Korea’s upper echelon to become the Dear Leader’s designated successor. Relations between North and South Korea have sunk to a low point not seen in years, and Japan is threatening to make North Korea’s Taepodong-2 missile test also a test of their anti-missile interceptor system.

North Korea says that the Taepodong-2 is meant to carry a satellite into orbit, which is reminiscent of the Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik, the world’s first artificial satellite, back in 1957. Sputnik’s launch was not only a propaganda coup for the Soviet Union, but it was also a bold way of telling the United States that their R-7 missile could carry a nuclear warhead from the Soviet heartland straight to the US. The launch quickly spurred talk of a “missile gap” between the US and Soviet Union (that really didn’t exist) and sparked an arms race as the US tried to ‘catch up’. Luckily for the Soviets the US didn’t know just how long it took them to get an R-7 ready for launch, a process that included a full day just to load the missile with fuel – making it basically useless as a weapon of war.

The North Koreans don’t have the luxury of satellite-free skies though; intelligence agencies around the world have been able to follow the many weeks of preparation they’ve put in to getting the Taepodong-2 ready to fly. If the Taepodong-2 were being readied during a time of war, there would have been ample time to destroy the thing on the launch pad, long before it ever flew.

The Taepodong-2 isn’t an effective weapon, whether its an effective propaganda tool depends on whether or not North Korea’s neighbors and other interested parties (like the United States) allow them to once again use threats of military force as a bargaining chip in negotiations to provide aid and lift sanctions against North Korea that have dragged on for years.