Is This Really The Time or the Place to Launch Rockets?

For a variety of reasons, apparently not.

Look, I’m the last person on Earth to subscribe to the morally equivalent view of the Koreas as a north-going zax and a south-going zax. South Korean leaders don’t profit politically from international extortion and provocations — well, OK, there is this — but objectively, the world isn’t threatened by South Korea launching satellites or making advances in the nuclear fuel cycle, something President Lee’s people have personally told me they’re keen to pursue.

The problem with these things is that diplomatic efforts to put North Korea back into the box are generally expressed in pan-Korean terms, as in “nuclear free Korean peninsula.” I’m sympathetic to the argument that North Korea has long since broken those agreements anyway. I’m even more sympathetic to the argument that South Korea is going to need its own nuclear deterrent, as will Japan. Frankly, that might even give China some necessary incentives. I’m mostly unmoved by fear of an arms race that China and North Korea started years ago. But at this particular stage, the diplomatic optics of a South Korean satellite launch or nuclear advances just aren’t right.

By next year, maybe that will change. For now, the more appropriate focus ought to be on constricting North Korea’s palace economy and forcing it to accept verifiable disarmament (or driving it out of existence).

Update: More here, at the Washington Post. Note that this was published before South Korea scrubbed the launch:

Years ago, the U.S. government spurned South Korea’s appeals for assistance under what a diplomatic official last week described as a long-standing policy of “not supporting new space launch vehicles” anywhere.

South Korea responded by spending an estimated $200 million to obtain the assistance of Russia, whose ballistic missile technology has also directly or indirectly benefited North Korea, Brazil, Iran and Syria. Russia and South Korea have pledged to respect the Missile Technology Control Regime, a voluntary group of countries that limits transfers explicitly related to long-range ballistic or cruise missiles but welcomes cooperation on space programs.

According to South Korean officials, Washington subsequently intervened in 2006 with Russia, which is supplying the first stage of the rocket about to be launched, to try to limit the technology transfer and ensure that Moscow would monitor the technology’s use.

South Korea’s rocket would also have passed through Japanese airspace, but outwardly, Japan is saying it isn’t concerned and wishes South Korea success. The Obama Administration seems more likely to have intervened, and the passing of Kim Dae Jung may be a convenient reason for President Lee to postpone the launch until some yet-to-be announced (and later, vanishing) date.