Ho Hum, North Korea Violates 2 More U.N. Resolutions, World Yawns
North Korea has reportedly conducted an engine ignition test for a long-range missile, presumably the Taepodong-2 missile with a range of 6,700 km, at a new long-range missile test site under construction in Dongchang-li, North Pyongan Province. For the test, the rocket engine of a missile is laid out horizontally at the test site and ignited to test its performance.
The test confirms that part of the Dongchang-li test site, which is expected to be completed by 2009, is already operational, and that North Korea has been continuing development of long-range missiles.
The engine is presumably for a Taepodong-2 missile, whose test firing failed in July 2006, or an improved version with a range of longer than 10,000 km. A government source said after the failed test in 2006, North Korea has intermittently conducted engine ignition tests and continued development of long-range missiles.
The Dongchang-li test site is said to be much larger and better than the one in Musudan-ni. Its existence was first reported in the foreign press last Thursday. [Chosun Ilbo]
Let us consult the Book of Meaningless Prohibitions, Resolution 1718, Paragraph 5 (right after the ones about wearing white after Labor Day and snacking after 10 p.m.):
[T]he DPRK shall suspend all activities related to its ballistic missile programme and in this context re-establish its pre-existing commitments to a moratorium on missile launching;
And here’s Paragraph 2 of Resolution 1695:
[T]he DPRK suspend all activities related to its ballistic missile programme, and in this context re-establish its pre-existing commitments to a moratorium on missile launching;
I feel the occasional compulsion to point these things out not because they are consequential but because they are not. Still, the dwindling ranks (opens in a Vista-clogging pdf) of the UN-topians deserve to be browbeaten with these things. I’m actually hoping that this time, the U.N. will underperform its most famous parody by not even managing to send Kim Jong Il “a very angry letter.” Our crack State Department did manage to meekly acknowledge the violation of one of these resolutions (one out of two?). Safe to say that not one of a wide range of possible consequences for this will be considered, much less imposed.
I should also note that they — the North Koreans, I mean — are blathering about their “war deterrent” again (that’s code talk for the nuclear arsenal they had supposedly promised to give up). Try to reassure yourself that nothing the North Koreans say should be taken at face value … except their promises to disarm, of course, because you’d have to hate peace not to believe those. Hey, you don’t hate peace, do you?