North Korea Said to Be Preparing Long-Range Missile Launch

Happy Groundhog day. I don’t know if His Porcine Majesty emerged from his palace and saw his shadow today, but it certainly looks like we’re in for four more years of extortion:

North Korea appears to be preparing to test-launch its longest range ballistic missile, media reported on Tuesday, just days after Pyongyang warned that the Korean peninsula was on the brink of war.

North Korea, which typically launches missiles in periods of political tension, last week said it was scrapping all agreements with South Korea in a move analysts said was aimed at pressuring Seoul and grabbing the attention of new U.S. President Barack Obama. [ID:nSEO206792]

South Korea’s Yonhap news agency and Japan’s Sankei Shimbun cited unnamed government sources as saying the North had been moving equipment used in the launch of its Taepodong-2 missile, which the North last test-fired in July 2006.

A train carrying a large object has been moved from a factory and has headed to the site of a newly constructed missile launch site on the North’s west coast, Yonhap quoted an unnamed South Korean government source as saying.

“The object is suspected as being a Taepodong-2,” he said. [Reuters]

For the first time in recorded history, Joe Biden stands on the precipice of being right about something.

A missile launch would flout U.N. Security Council Resolutions 1695 and 1718. Recall that the previous July 4, 2006 attempt to launch a Taepodong II failed, although the North Koreans successfully launched five shorter-range missiles that day.

The 2006 test took place at Musudan-ri on the East coast, near North Korea’s nuclear test site and one of its larger concentration camps.

The new activity is being observed in a different location, a new site on North Korea’s northwest coast. Judging by the apparent new construction, the North Koreans plowed right along with building the site despite two U.N. resolutions clearly prohibiting it (but that is now the stuff of household parody). Here are some Google Earth images of the massive complex. In the bottom image, the launch gantry is clearly visible.

Click the images for full size.

Note the concrete ducts for the exhaust flames, just to the left of where the gantry shadow is pointing.
Hat tip and thanks to James.