First-world nations had plenty [wired.com] of [wikipedia.org] problems [wikipedia.org] with their space programs at first too. Considering that North Korea has isolated itself, it's not surprising that they're going through the pain everyone else went through 60 years ago.

I live in Seoul, you insensitive clod!

I am serious.

And since you are an insensitive clod and most likely an American, consider this. Tens of thousands of American soldiers and civilians live in or near Seoul. Right now. That means they are within artillery range of North Korea. (No, I'm not kidding.)

Feel better?

It's so easy to make bold assertions when you don't know or care about the consequences...

Few sources without a vested interest are equipped with the tracking radars and other equipment needed to verify whether or not the launch failed.

They've had missiles that could reach Japan for quite some time already... this was quite the failure for them.

North American Aerospace Defense .. always laughed at the way the military has no respect for acronym formation. They often take the letters from where-ever they can get em and sometimes they just throw in a letter from no-where. It used to be North American Air Defense.. but then they had to deal with ballistic missiles, which are clearly out of the air when you want to detect them, so they upgraded to "Aerospace". Personally, I thought they should have upgraded to "North American Orbital and Air Defence" .. of course that still leaves the R being borrowed from ORbital, but hey, it's an improvement. Having the R stand for "Realtime" would be good, if only NORAD did realtime tracking, which they don't. The oldies among us may remember when NORAD announced that civil defense training was pointless, as no-one would have time to get to a bunker.. because they just can't detect launches, and the target of launches, fast enough. This hasn't changed in 30 years. There's still an airman sitting at a terminal doing this monitoring. There's no Googlesque computer doing search for launch indicators and tracking flight trajectories. The only reason they're not still using slide rules is because pocket calculators are government subsidized.

...even by failing, they obviously learned something about the performance of that missile, and will draw conclusions that will allow them to build better missiles in the future. This reflects poorly on the United States, NATO, China, Japan, and S. Korea, since they couldn't prevent this clearly provocative activity from occuring and get N. Korea back to the table. The UN will do nothing, even with Ban as the secretary general.

Nope, many of you probably don't. Around the time the Russians put up Sputnik, the American space program was centered around Project Vanguard. It was going to put our first satellite into orbit. And our first satellite was going to be way better than Sputnik.

Only the rockets kept crashing. It became a source of national embarrassment and the subject of jokes.

See this image [wikimedia.org], for examp.e.

Read the news release [northcom.mil] concerning this event from the U.S. Northern Command and NORAD. They did not use the word "failure" at all. Just your standard, dry, government news release.

Nothing. But that doesn't stop the DPRK from benefiting from having the capability to nuke Japan. The DPRK is heavily dependent on aid from the West, having a nuclear stick allows it to demand aid on far more favourable terms and remain relevant on the world stage.

They're like that because the DPRK still acts like the Cold War is on, with cross border skirmishes with the South every few years at least. Not to mention the fact that the Korean War never officially ended.

This ownership is dependent on the country involved being a signatory of the Outer Space Treaty (OST) of 1967. N. Korea recently signed this and is trying to use this treaty as justification for being able to carry out these tests.

Since the UN has passed a resolution banning ballistic launches from N Korea it is questionable as to whether signatories of the OST have to honor the provisions of this treaty. And of course the signatories can dispute the question of whether or not the N Korean launch is an effort to do legitimate space exploration under the provisions of the OST or to develop missiles they can sell to Syria, Iran etc. for use as weapons.

Given that it is known that N Korea is already selling missiles to Iran and Syria, and that there were observers from these countries at this launch it seems to me that there are not reasons to believe that anyone will pay attention to the OST in this case.

UN doesn't enter into it. Japan is still essentially a protectorate of the United States of America -- nuking Japan would be legally equivalent to nuking Hawaii in international law, and the response would be just as swift.

Ummm, you're off by a decade or two if you think the kidnapping stuff comes from Bush.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korean_abductions_of_Japanese [wikipedia.org]

There are lots of other hits too. And that isn't even beginning to touch what undercover reporter have exposed from within North Korea. Did ya know that human tastes like pork? How about opium being more profitable a crop than any grain while costing less in upkeep than the populace the grain would have fed. Ya don't think that the CIA was alone in exchanging drugs, guns, and cash, do you? How about these reporters?

http://cbs13.com/local/north.korea.americans.2.963243.html [cbs13.com]

Invading Iraq was a geo-polical move, possibly a bad one, but that won't be known for a few more years. North Korea, the country that invaded South Korea, is actual dangerous if you live in Japan or South Korea. Kim has successfully, and repeatedly, extorted aid and concessions by threatening his neighbors then backing off if he is just given what he demands. This was with both the Bush and Clinton administrations. Russia and China tolerate him, as he is their geo-political bishop piece.

Depends on the telemetry they were getting. If they laced sensors throughout the rocket and were transmitting back every last detail, then yes, they will have learned a hell of a lot.

Chances are they didn't, which means they won't know what warning signs were evident, nor will they know precisely what bit failed, nor will they know how it failed or even exactly when it failed.

Yes, failure can tell you a lot. Rolls Royce experimented with deliberately burning out their early aircraft engines to see where the points of failure were. They then re-engineered those parts. Not long after, they had perhaps the world's most powerful, most reliable engine built.

A parallel would be for North Korea to do static test after static test, each time pushing the engine up to (and maybe beyond) design limits to see what fails, then re-design that part. Static tests can only tell you so much, but this would eliminate what are probably very fundamental design flaws.

That is not the direction they are going, however. They are opting for political showmanship. A very dangerous form of showmanship at that.

the USS Jimmy Carter is the sub assigned to those type of duties now, it has been lengthened by 100 feet to incorporate more ELINT gathering equipment as well as facilities for the type of operations you are discussing here

Blind man's bluff is indeed a good read, I lent my copy to a friend and she lost it
         

Perfect. From the link you provided:

Unha-2, which was launched at the Tonghae Satellite Launching Ground in Hwadae County, North Hamgyong Province at 11:20 on April 5, Juche 98 (2009), accurately put Kwangmyongsong-2 into its orbit at 11:29:02, nine minutes and two seconds after its launch.

The satellite is going round the earth along its elliptic orbit at the angle of inclination of 40.6 degrees at 490 km perigee and 1 426 km apogee. Its cycle is 104 minutes and 12 seconds.

Mounted on the satellite are necessary measuring devices and communications apparatuses.

The satellite is going round on its routine orbit.

It is sending to the earth the melodies of the immortal revolutionary paeans "Song of General Kim Il Sung" and "Song of General Kim Jong Il" and measured information at 470 MHz. By the use of the satellite the relay communications is now underway by UHF frequency band.

With that kind of info, there should be dozens of observatories that should be able to spot it. Or HAM radio guys to find the signal it's broadcasting.

Anyone been looking for it yet?

Maybe payback for the years spent under Japanese occupation? Just because you have the memory of a gnat doesn't mean others do as well. Hell, the Muslims are still arguing over of the results of the third Caliph getting whacked in 656. My experience with Asians is they are not likely to easily forget Japanese domination.

What would the DPRK possibly benefit by nuking Japan, other than the safe knowledge they'd need a pretty accurate stopwatch to measure the very short span of time between them doing that and their government being vaporized as every other nation on Earth expressed their displeasure with large amounts of ordinance.

The game is politics, not war

As others have mentioned, they don't benefit from nuking Japan, they benefit from the ability to nuke Japan. The threat of violence is often a more powerful political tool than actually committing violence.
The reaction to a North Korean nuclear strike would greatly depend on the scope, level of casualties, and capabilities for further destruction.
Complete annihilation of Japan would surely result in a glowing North Korea. However, hitting Japan with a single nuke may not result in nuclear counterattack.
Any retaliation would be muted by political pressure from Russia and China, fear of enormous civilian death tolls, and the potential spread of radioactive fallout. Think any neighbors want a nuclear counterattack given their land and water could be poisoned?
Limited nuclear action against Japan would likely receive only a conventional response, Iraq style invasion. The North Korean government may think it possible they could "win" such a scenario.

Why would any nation want to isolate itself the way the DPRK is isolated?

Total control. Trade leads to the introduction of foreign ideas, which could destabilize the existing social structures. People, especially those with wealth and power, fear potential changes in government, economics, and culture. Isolationism is not unprecedented, Japan went through such a period which only ended after some gunboat diplomacy by the US.

US-DPRK relations are an artifact of the cold war, and unlike the USSR, no state large enough to actually compete with the US emerged there, so the tiny country is being stomped on for no good reason other than for siding with the losing superpower from the twentieth century.

North Korean isolationism stems from their own foreign policies. The US trades with communist China and Vietnam, while Europe also trades with Cuba.

Buy a history book not written in the US, please.

Remember Hans Blix - stating for the record that Saddam did not hide anything?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Blix#Iraq_disarmament_crisis_.282002-2003.29 [wikipedia.org]

You know he was right?

You understand that the US invasion had absolutely nothing to do with any "Iraqi threat"?