North Korea Ballistic Missile Explodes On Launch Fourth Straight Time 154
Earlier this week, the state media of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) broadcasted video of leader Kim Jong Un watching what appears to have been a successful launch of a submarine-launched ballistic missile. That was all fabricated, according to analysts. According to them, the launch actually took place in April. It is believed that the video was broadcasted as "an attempt to demonstrate North Korea's nuclear threat as a senior DPRK official meets with China this week." Ars Technica reports: The video was broadcast just after analyst reports said North Korea had made a fourth failed attempt in two months to test-launch the Musudan -- a missile designed to strike at targets as distant as Guam and the Philippines. The missile exploded on launch. Earlier on April 15, North Korea's military attempted a launch from a mobile launching system, but it exploded shortly after liftoff. Just two weeks later, as North Korea was preparing for the congress of the Worker's Party, there was an attempt at a dual launch -- with both missiles crashing into the sea.
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I was thinking the real story is that their guidance sensors are so accurate they can target and annihilate mosquitos only a few mm across. See also: dwarven fishing pole [wowhead.com]
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Nitwit! Idiot! Stupid! Worm! Loser! Moron!
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New Anti-Missile Laser Tech (Score:5, Funny)
Re:New Anti-Missile Laser Tech (Score:5, Informative)
The idea is interesting but it doesn't really work. I know you are probably joking, but just to be clear the missile blew up very shortly after launch. . In atmosphere the effective range of laser weapons is short. 20 km is a generally safe upper estimate on range. See the Boeing YAL-1 for more detail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_YAL-1 [wikipedia.org]. And a failure due to a laser would be highly noticeable in the debris and nature of the explosion and even if the laser wasn't visible in the regular spectrum, it would very likely show up on infrared. North Korea is definitely paying very close attention to their borders, and especially near where the rockets are being launched. It isn't clear to me where this launch occurred from. They have two main launch areas. Mof their launches are either from Tonghae https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonghae_Satellite_Launching_Ground [wikipedia.org] or Sohae https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sohae_Satellite_Launching_Station [wikipedia.org] and neither one is that far from China. Sohae is in fact very close. If the US had developed anti-missile lasers, it seems unlikely they would want to use them this way on China's backdoor at this time.
That said, it wouldn't surprise me incredibly if some sort of ongoing sabotage has been at work. But for it to be a laser that would mean that many fundamental aspects of the technology would need to have been drastically improved in a very short time, and that they would then think this was a good enough use to to risk it
sabotage or incompetence? (Score:3, Insightful)
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considering how North Korea lises to kill people as punishment, I wouldn't be surprised if they have managed to run out of top rocket scientists.
I was thinking the same thing.
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I would think any laser powerful enough to take out a missile would so heavily ionize the atmosphere around it that it would be irrelevant whether the laser itself was made out of visible frequencies or not.
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Why would it? Even if some energy is absorbed by air, it's along a hair-thin path, so convection and conduction should keep the temperature well beneath disassociation point.
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In atmosphere the effective range of laser weapons is short. 20 km is a generally safe upper estimate on range.
Yeah, but it sure can pop popcorn [youtube.com]!
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What about microwave beams?
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There isn't much atmosphere if you're shooting straight down.
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seems to be working quite well. I wonder if they are using the ship based or satellite based?
I think it's shark-based.
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Ah, yes, the Alan Parsons Project.
Just glad I'm not an engineer there! (Score:5, Funny)
I imagine failure is not associated with longevity.
Re:Just glad I'm not an engineer there! (Score:5, Insightful)
Given how many failures they've had, it's amazing they have any engineers left.
Then again, maybe that's the problem. All of the good engineers were "retired" after bad launches and now they're stuck with guys who have no experience in engineering and are struggling to make sense of the equations lest they be "retired" also.
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There's never a lack of job opportunities in People's Republic of North Korea!
Re:Just glad I'm not an engineer there! (Score:5, Funny)
People's Republic of North Korea!
Hah. PRoNK.
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People's Republic of North Korea!
Hah. PRoNK.
Given the mirth in the room after reading this out, why is it not modded 5 - Funny?
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Assuming they had any to begin with. I'd guess when NK started down the crazy communist path, they had their own "great leap forward" complete with a purge of anyone smart enough to know that it was a bad idea.
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Mainly they've been reliant on old Soviet technology. Actually even China is still very reliant on Soviet technology. Their first aircraft carrier was largely built during the late Soviet era and sat in a Ukraine drydock for many years before being sold to them where they finished outfitting it.
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Which makes sense since America, the USSR & Great Britan got first dibs.
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make do [grammarist.com]
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Then again, maybe that's the problem. All of the good engineers were "retired" after bad launches and now they're stuck with guys who have no experience in engineering and are struggling to make sense of the equations lest they be "retired" also.
The People's Republic of North Korea has the best scientists! This information video may enlighten you... [youtube.com]
Re:Just glad I'm not an engineer there! (Score:5, Insightful)
Or maybe it's just hard, especially for a country of 24.9 million people that's largely isolated from the rest of the world. That's about 1/10 the size of the Soviet Union when they launched Sputnik (about 205 million), and the Soviet Union had considerable access to western knowledge both through espionage and German rocket scientists they snapped up.
All that said, the idea that engineers are executed on failures is wishful thinking. The path to success goes through multiple failures, and the best possible scenario for anyone who doesn't want to see North Korea obtain long range missile capabilities would be for the regime to punish failure severely.
It is encouraging that their failure rate is so high. But we shouldn't take too much encouragement from that. Just getting to the point where you can fail isn't exactly easy, and if you learn from those failures and funding doesn't dry up, eventually you will succeed. The German Aggregat rocket series (which culminated in the A4 rocket, more popularly known as the "V2") was riddled with discouraging failures though the early years, but the Germans kept pouring money into it. Granted they had the best rocket minds in the world, but they were living in a vacuum tube world where telemetry was much harder to obtain. They had to guess their way through their failures. The North Koreans don't -- not to the same degree.
If they carry on, the North Koreans will eventually succeed in making something that works well enough to threaten other countries with.
Re:Just glad I'm not an engineer there! (Score:4, Interesting)
All that said, the idea that engineers are executed on failures is wishful thinking. The path to success goes through multiple failures, and the best possible scenario for anyone who doesn't want to see North Korea obtain long range missile capabilities would be for the regime to punish failure severely.
True, but it still doesn't mean they aren't doing it. North Korea is a very messed up place. They send plenty of their upper class kids to western schools and get fine degrees from places that are not going to just sign off on them because they are somebodies brat. Still, they may have some great agricultural majors directing the country, but they still follow irrigation and plowing methods that increase soil erosion and hurt their crops in the long term because the eldest Kim advised they do it that way. If one of the Kims happened to do an on site inspection and happened to give some "helpful advice" (there's an actual term for it, but I'd have to go look it up and I'm not sure I even have that book still), then they'll follow that advise no matter what and if anything goes wrong, its still their fault.
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It's not the 1940's or 1950's anymore - all the know-how of those German engineers (and more) can be had by hitting Amazon. The actual experience you can't
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Sure. If the information wasn't in the public domain it'd be much, much harder. Having that information is how a country with a GDP of only fifteen billion dollars managed to put a satellite in orbit. But that still doesn't make it easy. Actual experience tells you how to build a design that is sound in principle so that the actual rocket doesn't blow up -- which is very common in rocket experimentation.
Running a rocket design program in an economy as poor as North Korea's is even more challenging. It's a
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"Just getting to the point where you can fail isn't exactly easy"
Well I'm not entirely sure that's true, despite my lack of knowledge on this topic I'm pretty sure even I could fashion some kind of pointy tube out of metal, fill it full of some kind of fuel, shove a fuse made of string or something dipped in fuel and light it only to have it probably blow up on the floor or a few feet off of it.
I'm assuming you meant that getting to the point where you have something theoretically viable but fail is difficu
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Given how many failures they've had, it's amazing they have any engineers left.
Then again, maybe that's the problem. All of the good engineers were "retired" after bad launches and now they're stuck with guys who have no experience in engineering and are struggling to make sense of the equations lest they be "retired" also.
Until they get a smart engineer, who "fails" in such a way that the missile "crashes" where all the brass is standing.
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These are probably their best and brightest and maybe even their most rebellious individuals. I can see them doing this intentionaly as their own way to fight the system. If they employ slave labor the way the Nazis did in the V2 program, the same situation may apply and the engineers themselves could be off the hook for the quality of the components. The workers and scientists could even be working together to undermine the government.
I expect a lot of really interesting stories to come out of North Korea
This is what happens... (Score:5, Insightful)
...when technical decisions are made for political reasons.
At least, that is my assumption as to why they keep failing. I imagine that at every level of organization throughout the team building and launching these missiles, egos are driving people to hide mistakes that need correcting, to promote people with connections but not talent, to skip work in order to meet deadlines, etc.
Re:This is what happens... (Score:4, Insightful)
...when technical decisions are made for political reasons.
Yeah, thats the problem with North Korea...
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Remember North Korea has successfully launched two orbital satellites, so it's not like they're just going through the motions here. That's two successful launches for 4 tries, to LEO with rather small (100kg) payloads. Not too shabby under the circumstances.
So what this thing represents isn't some kind of pie-in-the-sky political boondoggle; it represents an ambitious and attempt to extend NK's technological capabilities. It delivers a much larger payload than the rocket systems which NK's semi-successf
Heads will roll (Score:3)
Re:Heads will roll (Score:4, Interesting)
"Problem is, the engineer(s) on the butcher block was/were probably their best. Un will wind up whittling down his rocket scientists to nothing."
While I do feel sorry for Un's victims and their families I have to say that this is almost as bad of a "problem" as it was a problem that Hitler hated all the Jewish physicists. The only real problem is that they can not run away with their families.
Re:Heads will roll (Score:5, Interesting)
Historically, nations that follow these sorts of practices become self-limiting in their ability to cause widespread geopolitical problems, at least pushing it out a few generations. Other nations have stunted their technical and scientific growth massively in the past, for reasons which make little sense today, like China destroying the largest navy in the known history of the earth in 1525 and banning construction of ships with more than two masts.
Re:Heads will roll (Score:4, Interesting)
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Of course they knew, or should have. Weak countries always get invaded eventually. China had been invaded by steppe nomads over and over for hundreds of years until the invention of gunpowder.
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No doubt someone is up for execution for this embarrassing string of events. Problem is, the engineer(s) on the butcher block was/were probably their best. Un will wind up whittling down his rocket scientists to nothing.
Cool!
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No doubt someone is up for execution for this embarrassing string of events.
Nah, they will put them on the next test launch to debug the problems in real-time. It's a massive career "boosting" opportunity! (Or so the Glorious Leader was heard to say)
It may be amusing to see them fail (Score:1)
but they are likely learning from every failure.
So ballistic missiles aren't easy... (Score:5, Insightful)
Despite how funny this is, it IS serious (Score:5, Interesting)
Watching North Korea fail, and do so repeatedly is really funny. What is not funny is their determination. I note that others are suggesting that their rocket scientists are probably short-lived, as are their nuclear scientists. Nonsense. Kim Jong Un does offer special favors for those persons who are successful but a nuclear scientist or a rocket scientist are unlikely to challenge him or his heirs to government positions of power. They are scientists, not political operatives and, thus, are seen as commodities to be used, not existential challenges to be met.
The determination they are showing that they will do everything in their power, including starve their people, in order to produce weapons of mass-destruction is the real takeaway here. While I am happy at their repeated failures, I am not happy at their persistence.
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Watching North Korea fail, and do so repeatedly is really funny. What is not funny is their determination.
Last week I watched The Propaganda Game [imdb.com] on Netflix. It was an interesting eye opener of what North Koreans think of themselves and the rest of the world. Especially interesting was the Spanish guy who effectively emigrated to NK and was spouting the NK political line.
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Well, that assumes that Kim Jong Un is fairly stable, now doesn't it? I mean, okay, just because he is "Dear Leader" (or whatever the hell they call him) and has this cult of personality built up around himself and his family (well, his father and grandfather) doesn't mean he's as crazy as a shithouse rat, but let's consider something.
He's probably not used to being told "We can't do that." or "No." or anything like that. I mean, yeah, he has no problem having relations executed for getting in his way, but
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Why would he be upset at it continuing to be exactly the same as it's always been?
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Actually, I think Kim Jong Un is eminently rational; cold, probably sociopathic, but incredibly rational. Think about it. When he first took over from Kim Jong Il, the regime put minders in place, most prominently his uncle, Jang Song-Thaek. Kim Jong Un seems to have understood that the first few years of his reign were going to be with training wheels, but when he decided it was time to come off, he took out anyone in the regime that had a significant power base, or any close ties with China. Stalin and Ma
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Right. What happens when they do manage to keep the candle lit?! Listen people - they have a rocket, and rocket fuel ! And a submarine (man I want one of those).
Give me a budget and a mission statement and I can get'r done. Imagine what a whole country can do?! I recall a few USA rockets failing to achieve orbit.
Of course I also have to wonder about 4 failures. Yes rockets are hard. But might their centrifuges be off balance? :-P
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The US and several other countries keep a close eye on this activity, using not only radar, but they also record all the radio data that goes back and forth.
Heck, we probably know more about their missiles than they do.
So far it looks like it's still SNAFU. (Situation Normal, All F'd Up)
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Kim is smart enough to know that having powerful weapons is the only way possible for him to stay in power.
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What about the approval of his countrymen? We (the United States) do not necessarily agree with everything that Angela Merkel or David Cameron does, but they remain in power. And there are countries without nuclear weapons and missiles. We may not agree with everything that Luis Guillermo Solís, Juan Carlos Varela, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf or Ernest Bai Koroma (none have nuclear weapons, ICBMs and all were popularly-elected) do, yet they stay in power and there is no threat to their position from the Unit
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Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons in exchange for a promise from the USA and Russia to protect its sovereignty and territorial integrity. Russia later decided to "liberate" Crimea and parts of Ukraine because fascism.
Libya gave up its nuclear program and the whole country got "liberated" and nothing good happened to Gaddafi.
So, Kim giving up his nuclear weapons would most likely result in a "liberation" too.
I do not think that Kim is a very good leader for the country (even Stalin looks good compared to h
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I learned about their many failures over the years initially in 1984, and their current hyperinflated ego in charge was born in 1983, so it's a lot more than just his 'determination'. At this point their continued attempts and failures have become a well entrenched tradition!
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I know of no other country that has had such a long succession of utter failures and still continues to declare themselves successful.
somebody gonnnnna get huuuuuurt! (Score:1)
4/4. Outstanding reliability! (Score:2)
Now they just need to figure how to transport the unlaunched missiles to their targets in order to launch/detonate them on top of the running-dog imperialist lackeys they hate so much.
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How many this time? (Score:1)
I wonder how many scientists and generals are going to be shot THIS time. Or maybe they'll just round up and shoot all their families instead.
What happens to the engineers and scientists? (Score:2)
How does DPRK deal with failure? Eventually they are going to lose patience with the people responsible for failure.
Do rocket scientists get reassigned to digging ditches, do they get executed, what happens to them?
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How does DPRK deal with failure? Eventually they are going to lose patience with the people responsible for failure. Do rocket scientists get reassigned to digging ditches, do they get executed, what happens to them?
Honestly, probably not much, at least for the rank and file scientists. Remember, the people working on these projects are expensive. They've most likely gotten the best and most expensive education available in the DPRK, and are allocated some of the best housing and food. A department head might have their own career sidetracked or at a dead end, but even the are unlikely to be executed (probably because they had the necessary connection to reach that high a rank in the first place). The government ha
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The government has simply invested too much into them to kill them.
You're assuming that Dear Leader is a rational Despot.
Absolutely NOTHING in his past or present behavior would support such a conclusion.
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the US didn't have all that many failures in their early rockets, because we started off with German scientists who already did the hard trial and error.
X37 (Score:1)
Got real punch!
Silly (Score:2)
"Ha ha ha, silly North Koreans are so silly."
Meanwhile, they learn something new with each failure, and their nuclear weapons program takes another step forward. What were we laughing about again?
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No they dont. They execute the engineers for failures. They dont learn anything at all.
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I doubt they execute all the engineers. They prolly just take out the head guy and everybody else moves up a notch. All the real work is done by the people in their 20's, anyway.
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"Ha ha ha, silly North Koreans are so silly."
Meanwhile, they learn something new with each failure, and their nuclear weapons program takes another step forward. What were we laughing about again?
if they had any smarts at all, they'd just announce that they were being invaded by muslims of some sort and wait for the offers of military aid to arrive.
Consequences (Score:2)
Sounds like someone is getting fired...and by "fired" I mean "literally burned alive".
Next time, invite Kim Jong Un to the Launch Pad (Score:2)
They should follow China's lead (Score:1)
It is believed that the video was broadcasted as "an attempt to demonstrate North Korea's nuclear threat as a senior DPRK official meets with China this week."
First, "boradcasted [sic]"? Really?
Anyhow, since they're trying to impress China, they should splice in movie clips, like China does. [bbc.com] Maybe cut to Kim Jong Un, cut to stock footage of a Minuteman missile launching , back to Kim Jong Un smiling, then the clip from Independence Day when the White House blows up.
Heads rolling tonight (Score:2)
To be fair, (Score:2)
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Laser was Best Investment Ever! (Score:2)
Worth every penny.
Ha-Ha, they don't ever know : )
you're looking at it wrongly (Score:2)
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A: Look for the fat guy.
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Indeed, it does seem to be unwise to be the only fat guy in the country AND a likely primary target of any attack. I'd think you'd like to keep your footprint from satellite/drone view to be about the median in this case. Maybe the Fear Leader will realize this and require everyone to wear those goofy sumo wrestler suits around (only to discover the drones also have IR cameras and the big layer of insulation around everyone but him makes them have an even smaller signature - oh well, tough [!!BOOM!!]).
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Re:Trump is right, the experts are wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
Trump's proposal to have Japan and South Korea go nuclear is the right response to this.
OK remind me again. Which day of the week is it that you are saying that Trump thinks a nuclear Japan is good? I've lost track of which side of the topic he is currently on.
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Of course, that was just one interview, who knows what he claimed in the next.
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How exactly do you know North Korea exists to destroy everything you know and love?
Because North Korea is trying to build nuclear bombs and missiles that can reach North America.
Last time I checked, Mexico and Belgium weren't working hard to try to figure out how to drop a bomb on my head.
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You are completely missing the point.
How do you know?
How do you know you know, so to speak?
Most importantly, how do you know you can trust what you've heard?
How do you know they intend to launch bombs onto the US? Did you miss grade-school? Didn't you have discussions about the implications of nuclear warfare? Namely, retaliation?
Obviously no one is developing nuclear weapons for offensive purposes. The resources are too scarce across the world; they are entirely accounted for, therefore 1) only entities of
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To also be blunt: North Korea gets a bad image in media because there's nothing nice about North Korea. It's a country-sized concentration camp led by a succession of particularly nasty dicators who's only interest or competence is taking all power and wealth for th
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This is a serious problem. The entire discussion in this article is circular auto-gratification. Why exactly is it in your interest to make fun of North Korea? How exactly do you know North Korea exists to destroy everything you know and love? Why exactly is it so easy for you to be convinced of such things?
To be blunt: how exactly is it that you are so stupid to believe anything other the fact that North Korea gets a bad image in our media solely because the US lost a war to it and the interests of some astronomically wealthy businessmen suffered? How are you so stupid that you accept this opinion that has been slid into you mind exploiting the weakness of you wanting to fit in?
"OH YEAHHHHHH A NORTH KOREA STORY NOW I CAN REALLY SHOW THAT I FIT IN AND MAKE SOME GOOD JOKES AT NORTH KOREA'S EXPENSE AHAHHAHA TIME TO GET SWEET MOD POINTS FOR GOING WITH THE FLOW"
A country of incompetents or a determined country that has independently developed many technologies despite half the world shunning it: pick one.
Aren't you nerds supposed to be smart or something? Shame.
oh heck, i don't even know north korea exists at all.
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"Can't they just bootleg a copy of Photoshop?"
What for? These North Koreans have demonstrated one thing for sure: they know how to build a sturdy ballistic missile: it explodes three times in a row and it's still ready to explode the forth time!