The test wasn't a total surprise since North Korea has been telling ships to stay out of a part of the Sea of Japan where the missiles landed for the past two weeks. With the Fourth of July coming up on Sunday, and North Korea acting rather belligerent these days, there's been speculation that they might mark the day with the test of a long-range missile that they claim could reach Hawaii. North Korea used the Fourth of July in 2006 for the (failed) test of a Taepodong-2 ICBM, along with a brace of smaller rockets. But intelligence officials haven't seen the kind of activity that usually goes along with a North Korean long-range missile launch. The last Taepodong-2 test this past April, (another failure) came after two months of preparation.
Meanwhile mystery continues to surround a North Korean cargo ship. Officials first worried that the Kang Nam 1 was carrying material from North Korea's suspected weapons of mass destruction (WMD) program, then it was thought the ship was hauling conventional weapons to Myanmar (formerly known as Burma) in violation of a UN-backed embargo of the country. Some US officials, like Sen. John McCain, argued for the US Navy intercepting the Kang Nam 1 to inspect it or force into port before reaching Myanmar (after North Korea's April missile test, the US, Japan and South Korea said they would reserve the right to stop any ships they thought were carrying WMD technology as a type of sanctions against North Korea).
But now the ship has apparently turned around, prompting "unnamed officials" from the Obama administration to wonder if the whole voyage of the Kang Nam 1 wasn't an elaborate scam by North Korea to draw the United States (or Japan or South Korea) into an international incident where they would force the ship to stop only to find that it was carrying some benign cargo, making North Korea look like the victim of some conspiracy against it in the process.
The Kang Nam 1 is currently off the coast of Hong Kong.
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