U.S. watches for North Korea's next move after rocket crash

[Adrean]

(Reuters) - The United States was keeping a wary eye on North Korea after the reclusive state's unsuccessful launch of a long-range rocket, and President Barack Obama said on Friday that Pyongyang faced further isolation if it kept defying the international community.

The White House suspended a deal to provide significant food aid to North Korea following the rocket launch, which it had warned Pyongyang against. U.S. officials also consulted with other major powers, including North Korean ally China, on a possible response.

Obama said he was deeply concerned by North Korea's rocket launch, which violated U.N. Security Council resolutions, although he noted that "they've been trying to launch missiles like this for over a decade now and they don't seem to be real good at it."

"We will continue to keep the pressure on them and they'll continue to isolate themselves until they take a different path," Obama said in an interview with Telemundo.

North Korea acknowledged that its much-hyped long-range rocket launch failed. The United States and Japan said the rocket crashed into the sea after traveling a much shorter distance than a previous North Korean launch.

While the White House left the door open a crack to further talks with North Korea, the launch attempt in defiance of international pressure appeared to sideline for now Obama's hopes for engagement and usher in a new round of tensions.

A U.S. official warned that Pyongyang faced additional sanctions if it defied the international community again.

"If they continue to take additional provocative actions, we of course have to continue to look at ways in which we could tighten sanctions on the North Koreans, and take additional steps to apply pressure on the regime," White House National Security Council spokesman Ben Rhodes said.

Officials and analysts worried that embarrassment from the rocket's failure might spur North Korea to undertake a third underground nuclear test or other actions to buttress the rule of the North's young new leader, Kim Jong-un, son of former leader Kim Jong-il.

The Pentagon said it was keeping an eye on North Korea. "It's not just about missiles. It's about other things that they have and might do," Pentagon press secretary George Little told reporters.

Little said he could not confirm any underground nuclear test preparations in North Korea.

But an analysis of satellite images from North Korea suggested that preparations for such a test were under way, said James Hardy, Asia Pacific Editor of IHS Jane's Defense Weekly.

Pyongyang said the rocket launch was to put a satellite in orbit, but Washington and Tokyo described it as a disguised missile test.

The U.N. Security Council deplored the rocket launch, but said it would continue talks on an appropriate response, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice said in New York.

DELIVERING A MESSAGE

Rhodes said Washington would not go forward with a deal announced in February to provide North Korea with nutritional aid in return for its suspension of uranium enrichment activities and other movement toward the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.

The United States has insisted that the rocket launch was banned under that deal. North Korea said it was not.

The State Department said the food aid deal was "suspended" and that constructive engagement with North Korea was still possible if it were reciprocated by Pyongyang.

"But as we've said many times, we're not going to reward bad behavior with engagement," spokesman Mark Toner said.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke about the rocket launch on Friday with China's foreign minister, Yang Jiechi. "We're asking them to use their relationship with North Korea to convey our concern about their recent actions," Toner said.

Beijing, while making clear it was displeased with North Korea's behavior, generally opposes sanctions and other measures it sees as confrontational.

Jack Pritchard, president of the Korea Economic Institute and a former U.S. nuclear negotiator, said Pyongyang would need a "spectacular achievement to overcome the national embarrassment it finds itself in now."

"What that means is that it is now much more likely that North Korea will move forward with its third nuclear test," he said.

Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, said it was likely the principal reason for the launch was to consolidate the authority of its new leader, Kim.

"There is thus a real risk that he will turn to a tried and true path to accomplish the same ends. If history is any guide, this suggests that a test of a nuclear warhead or some sort of aggressive military action - for example, an artillery strike - against South Korea could be in the offing," he said.

"And if this latter scenario occurs, South Korea, unlike on previous occasions, is almost certain to retaliate," Haass wrote on CFR's blog.

(Additional reporting by Jeff Mason, David Alexander and Paul Eckert; Editing by Peter Cooney)

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[Adrean]

Why North Korea Sucks at Rocket Technology

Rockets: They’ve been around for, oh, 70 years. But just because they’re senior citizens doesn’t mean they’re technologically decrepit. As North Korea’s latest failed rocket test shows, launching a rocket into space is still, well, rocket science.

To successfully launch a rocket into space — a necessary achievement for creating the intercontinental ballistic missiles that North Korea wants and breathless American politicians baselessly fear they’ll develop — you need expertise in lots of things. Lots of physics. Lots of safe handling of dangerous chemicals. And lots of experience.

To put it simply, successful rocket launches are “a really complex system using volatile chemicals and subject to extreme shock and vibration,” explains Jeffrey Lewis, the director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the Monterrey Institute. “The environment is so unforgiving that even small details are critical. As a result, tacit knowledge is important, even for low-level employees like welders and so forth. As a result, repetition and practice is essential.”

As the world has seen, North Korea doesn’t excel in repetition and practice. Its four rocket tests since 1998 have all been failures. And they’ve been failures in part because they haven’t really been tests. They’ve been demonstrations — geopolitical statements of intent, rather than technological statements of experimentation.

Those aren’t things you want to mix up. If you do, then the geopolitical statement you send is one of incompetence. The English-language internet greeted the North’s latest failure with a mixture of derision and glee. So did the Obama administration.

“I guess the late founder of North Korea is disappointed. His birthday toy won’t arrive on time,” a senior U.S. official emails, along with a request to keep his name out of his jokes. “In fact, it won’t arrive at all. And if it did, some major reassembly would be required.”

In fairness, it’s not just North Korea. The list of countries to have successfully launched a satellite into space is in the single digits. Still, North Korea’s got some specific disadvantages.

“Not only are they short on money, but also expertise. Developing this technology requires expertise across a range of fields, from fluid dynamics to metallurgy to materials science to flight dynamics,” says Brian Weeden, a former officer with the U.S. Air Force Space Command. “Countries that have been successful in this area all have extensive science, technology, engineering and mathematics programs to develop people with expertise in those fields.

“It seems North Korea is trying to shortcut this process by buying parts and technology from abroad,” Weeden continues, “and slapping them together instead of taking the time and investing the resources to develop the proper foundations.”

In particular, North Korea’s short-range missile technology is based on work the Soviets did with their own rockets. But that’s really difficult to scale up — as Pyongyang seems not to have figured out. “What they’ve tried to do is get a bigger rocket by strapping a bunch of Scuds and their variants together. It’s not as easy as you’d think,” says Victoria A. Samson, a rockets expert with the Secure World Foundation.

“They’re clearly having trouble building multiple-stage rockets, which is what you need either to put a satellite up in space, or to build an [intercontinental ballistic missile] that can range, oh, say, the United States,” Samson says. “Then you run into the problem of actually being able to aim the rocket, once you’ve launched it. I’ve always said that if North Korea ever got a rocket built that could technically reach the United States, they’d be lucky to hit any part of the continental Unites States, because they certainly wouldn’t be able to guide it to its final destination.”

Of course, all bets are off if the North Koreans decide a bespoke intercontinental ballistic missile is too hard and opt to go shopping. On the other hand, North Korea seems to like to export its missile technology. Documents revealed by WikiLeaks indicated that North Korea had passed on its missiles to Iran. That may not actually be true. But judging from North Korea’s unbroken streak of failed launches, if Pyongyang really is sending missiles to Iran, that’s a two-fer for Washington.

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