North Korea’s Missile Mishap, Ctd

by Zack Beauchamp

Ackerman isn't worried about North Korea trying again:

There’s … reason to believe, with this latest failure, that Pyongyang is getting worse at their launches. “If the North Koreans were making progress with their missile program, you would expect to see them fixing problems after each failure and fine-tuning the technology,” says Brian Weeden, a former officer with the U.S. Air Force Space Command. “Instead, you see a range of different failure modes, indicating they are not really making much progress and actually may be going backwards as they keep making changes without truly understanding what went wrong in each case.”

A less sanguine Raymond Pritchett steps back to analyze the political implications in the Hermit Kingdom:

For the record, it is a demonstration of remarkable transparency that North Korea admitted failure with the rocket launch. It is so unprecedented for North Korea to admit failure in anything that some North Korean experts are suggesting this news of failure will be received by the population as bordering absurd and unbelievable. It is unclear what the purpose of announcing failure is, but rest assured – there is almost certainly a political calculation involved. One legitimate possibility I have heard mentioned is that the failure will be used as an excuse for the new leader to consolidate power by blaming the failure on Kim Jong-un's political rivals. However, another possibility is that by announcing failure and an investigation, it could be North Korea has reason to believe an outsider tampered with the rocket launch and the regime intends to blame South Korea for the failure.