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MARCO WERMAN: I'm Marco Werman, and this is The World. The Islamic Republic of Iran shot its first satellite into space today. The same technology could be used to develop ballistic missiles. That's why the State Department labeled the satellite launch a “grave concern.†More on that story in a few minutes. First, though, The World's Matthew Bell reports on a missile program in another country of concern to the US – North Korea.
MATTHEW BELL: News reports out of South Korea and Japan say the North Koreans are setting up a long-range missile test near the border with China. Military analyst Charles Vick, of Globalsecurity.org has been keeping an eye on publicly available satellite photographs of the site, and he says it's been clear for months that the North Koreans are getting ready to test fire something.
CHARLES VICK: Whether it will be a satellite launch or an ICBM test or both is unknown.
BELL: Vick says a long-range missile test would be most worrisome for the United States and its allies, even though North Korea's last one, in July 2006, failed miserably.
VICK: You know, that's what happens normally early in a program. But as time goes on, they learn from those failures and they clean them up and ultimately succeed. And that's typical of any ballistic missile space-booster program.
BELL: North Korea has a well-deserved reputation for bluster and political brinkmanship. Because of that, its behavior has been described as diplomacy first and foremost. But that's not how Charles Pritchard sees this. From the North Korean point of view, Pritchard says, preparations for another long-range missile test is about military capability.
CHARLES PRITCHARD: This is not a political message. It is simply one in which they will continue to do the R&D and the testing that's necessary to mature their program.
BELL: But there's a lot going on with North Korea right now. Not least, there are questions about the health and well-being of the Dear Leader. Kim Jong-Il is said to have had a stroke last August, and it's not clear who is next in line to take his place. Mike Chinoy is with the Pacific Council on International Policy, and he's the author of a new book about the North Korean nuclear issue called “Meltdown.â€
MIKE CHINOY: The political uncertainty surrounding Kim Jong-Il is unquestionably one factor in North Korean behavior, and it may help explain why an organization like the military is taking both a higher profile and a very tough line both to assert itself internally, and to do so, by demonstrating that in a sense, you're more catholic than the Pope.
BELL: Conducting a successful missile test is one way to do that; bellicose rhetoric about South Korea is another. And there's been plenty of that lately. In fact, North Korea just cancelled some of its most important agreements with the South. Statements from the North say the two countries are on the brink of war. That's because South Korean president Lee Myung-bak has stopped sending unconditional aid to North Korea. Gordon Flake is a Korea expert with the Mansfield Foundation in Washington. He says North-South relations are not good right now, but they could be worse.
GORDON FLAKE: There continue to be contact between North and South. There continue to be, you know, non-governmental aid organizations from the South working the North. The KFONG industrial park, although problematic, is still actually operating with South Koreans in there. So you know, at this point we're not at the point where the North Koreans have cut off all channels. They're clearly voicing their displeasure at the unwillingness of the South Korea regime to cowtow as they've done in the past.
BELL: If there's a message in all this for the incoming Obama administration, it's not easy to decipher. For example, North Korean officials recently told an American scholar that they now have enough weaponized plutonium to build several atomic bombs. On the other hand, Kim Jong-Il is said to have told Chinese officials that he is willing to give up his nuclear program through negotiations. Gordon Flake says the North Koreans are the masters of the mixed message. But, he says, that could come back to haunt them now that there's a new US president.
FLAKE: For the last eight years you've had a very bellicose amount of rhetoric coming out of Washington. But in terms of action, as North Korea's raced across every red line, the Bush administration has merely yawned and said, “Don't worry. We'll solve it through negotiations.†And I'm not sure the Obama administration will have that same inclination or that same political leeway in terms of response.
BELL: In other words, hardliners in Washington won't cut Barack Obama the same kind of slack they did with George Bush. If North Korea wanted to get the Obama administration's attention, they did – in a sense. The State Department said today that any missile test would be, frankly, provocative. For The World, I'm Matthew Bell.
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