Kim Jong-un orders investigation into missile failures
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has ordered an investigation into his country’s string of missile failures recently.
“Kim has instructed the special investigation team to implement a probe into the national defense sector starting on Nov. 1 to make the causes for the launch failures clear,” said Kim Heung-kwang, a North Korean defector and executive director of Seoul-based dissidents’ group North Korea Intellectuals Solidarity, in a press conference. Kim attributed the investigation to the North Korean leader’s belief that spies from the United States and South Korea had been implicated in a series of Musudan missile failures.
I wouldn’t want to be an engineer who worked on this missile, as Kim has a bad habit of routinely executing people at the slightest whim, and the failures here have been routinely spectacular.
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North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has ordered an investigation into his country’s string of missile failures recently.
“Kim has instructed the special investigation team to implement a probe into the national defense sector starting on Nov. 1 to make the causes for the launch failures clear,” said Kim Heung-kwang, a North Korean defector and executive director of Seoul-based dissidents’ group North Korea Intellectuals Solidarity, in a press conference. Kim attributed the investigation to the North Korean leader’s belief that spies from the United States and South Korea had been implicated in a series of Musudan missile failures.
I wouldn’t want to be an engineer who worked on this missile, as Kim has a bad habit of routinely executing people at the slightest whim, and the failures here have been routinely spectacular.
Readers!
Every February I run a fund-raising drive during my birthday month. This year I celebrate my 72nd birthday, and hope and plan to continue writing and posting on Behind the Black for as long as I am able.
I hope my readers will support this effort. As I did in my November fund-raising drive, I am offering autographed copies of my books for large donations. Donate $250 and you can have a choice of the hardback of either Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8 or Conscious Choice: The origins of slavery in America and why it matters today and for our future in outer space. Donate $200 and you can get an autographed paperback copy of either. IMPORTANT! If you donate enough to get a book, please email me separately to tell me which book you want and the address to mail it to.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
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Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
This guy reminds me of Caligula.
News like this reminds us that we should be eternally grateful for the life that we have here in the USA.
Perhaps he believes that after he “investigates” and executes several engineers, the Musadan program will become wildly successful? That ALWAYS works!
How would you like to be a North Korean rocket engineer today?
I thought Dear Leader was the most brilliant person ever, and invented everything that has ever been invented! So what does he need rocket scientists for?
Mike–
— interesting website.
Careful! That sorta thinking gets you tossed into a N. Korean Labor Camp!
(obligatory weekend star trek reference–)
Star Trek Supercut: Landru!
https://youtu.be/nZMuBIJxmnA
While I do enjoy making fun of the pudgy-troll in N. Korea (& Michael Moore), that is one area on Earth that ‘we’ have sorely neglected for far too long, as we abdicate our super-power status and things get dangerous beyond belief.
N. Korea, Iran, & Pakistan are BFF’s, and Kim has nuclear bombs. He could divert-us-from and/or drag-us-into, all sorts of mischief.
Hitchens on North Korea
https://youtu.be/P8-Vr_r36Fg
@wayne I doubt that NK can fall in the same way as the Soviet Union did. Partly because it is smaller and easier too control. Their culture in general seems to take authoritarianism and discipline more seriously than lazy drunk Russians and Central Europeans who were tired of the government’s failures and who watched Dallas on Western TV. There was always a tension between the military and the party in Soviet Union. Doesn’t seem to be the case in NK. I doubt there’s room even for a military coup there.
Here Hitchens talk about Iran. Tradition says that the government should take care of orphans and the sick. The regime has extended this to EVERY Iranian. Exactly the same strategy that Western politicians extend the welfare state to exterminate all forms of humanity:
https://youtu.be/qrBVQjivS08?t=128
He was obviously wrong, five years ago, about the popular opposition against the regime in Iran which now is much stronger than it has ever been with hundreds of billions of dollars from the US, alliance with Russia and Turkey, domination of Iraq and a path to nuclear weapons, while arch enemy Saudi Arabia is severely financially weakened.
Just like if George Steinbrenner ran a county instead of the Yankees
I wonder how the North is able to develop such weapon systems given the nature of science and engineering involves making mistakes along the path to breakthrough and discovery. If the consequences of normal human error is punishment, then why take risks?
This must be some kind of hell for so many people.
Seven failures out of eight launches in the past six months. It seems to me that the problem is less likely to be sabotage and more likely to be a lack of investigation into the root cause of any of the failures.
Readers of this site should have noticed that in the US and in Russia, failures have resulted in months-long stand-downs in order to determine not just what happened but what caused what happened — the root cause. It looks like North Korea has skipped this process, with the development of this rocket, and the results are as expected: failure after failure.
Kim Jong-un must be too impatient to do it right, so he is doing it expensive. Not only in terms of multiple lost rockets but in terms of lost confidence and in terms of improper training of his rocket engineers.
Kim Jong-un is looking for a scapegoat. Whether that scapegoat will be someone senior or someone junior, perhaps even Kim Jong-un does not yet know which he will arbitrarily choose.