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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.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 
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11 comments

  • Dave Williams

    This guy reminds me of Caligula.

  • t-dub

    News like this reminds us that we should be eternally grateful for the life that we have here in the USA.

  • PeterF

    Perhaps he believes that after he “investigates” and executes several engineers, the Musadan program will become wildly successful? That ALWAYS works!

  • Cotour

    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?

  • wayne

    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

  • wayne

    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

  • LocalFluff

    @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.

  • Cool Hand Fluke

    Just like if George Steinbrenner ran a county instead of the Yankees

  • Frank

    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.

  • Edward

    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.

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