North Korea Launched Missile Over Japan Toward Pacific Ocean | Hacker News Reader

North Korea Launched Missile Over Japan Toward Pacific Ocean

bloomberg.com

71 pointsschintan51 comments

An interesting old news article I came across from 1998 (almost 20 yrs ago) when Kim's father did the same thing:

> North Korea Fires Missile Over Japanese Territory (SEPT. 1, 1998)

http://www.nytimes.com/1998/09/01/world/north-korea-fires-mi...

Which also contained this blurb:

> North Korea previously conducted missile test firings in May 1993, when it fired four missiles into the Sea of Japan. Those launchings sent Japan into a panic and prompted the Government to consider cooperation on a regional missile defense system. Such a system is still years away.

It's interesting how long a missile defense system has taken to arrive in South Korea...

Edit: The US also predicted today's missile event when the UN passed sanctions a few days ago:

> Bill Richardson, a former U.S. ambassador to the UN said the sanctions were "better than nothing, but not enough to really pressure North Korea," adding that Pyongyang is likely to respond with a missile launch in the next few days. (Sept 11, 2017)

Having worked in aerospace I find it very interesting that a nation like North Korea can manage to launch such rockets with regularity. There is no way they are able to do this on their own. That much might be obvious. The real question is: Who's helping them and what's their objective?

Not sure what you're saying is obvious. What makes you think they can't do this on their own?

What makes you believe NK can't launch rockets alone?

It's not like it's rocket science. Er, ok, so it is rocket science but still. Other groups of people have done it, what makes it impossible for NK?

The impressive part is the pace. There are multiple launches a year, and constant incremental increase in capability. At this rate, they will have the ability to strike anywhere in the world in just a few years.

They're using the lean startup methodology. Iterate. Iterate. Iterate.

Even Hamas can launch rockets with pitiful infrastructure, what makes you think a nation like North Korea that has granted itself the capability of using all productivity and resources in the land wouldn't be able to do this?

Hamas launches the equivalent of sugar rockets with an explosive attached and lacks any precision.

North Korea is tinkering with a delivery system capable of placing nuclear weapons in the exact position necessary for optimal damage.

These things aren't equivalent, it's like comparing a rudimentary wooden wagon to an F1 car in terms of technology.

Not that they're not deadly on a smaller scale.

Ukraine. https://nyti.ms/2vwepeu

>Who's helping them and what's their objective?

Who's helping them is obvious - China.

What's their objective? Destabilizing and undermining American military hegemony in their sphere of influence and establishing themselves as Asia's sole superpower. I don't know how North Korea works into that, though. Maybe China just wants a proxy to harass the US with while having politically plausible deniability. Maybe they're hoping to step in when NK takes it too far and look like heroes, while making the US look feckless and weak.

> look like heroes

No one is gonna fall for that. Especially since most of its neighbors are aware of China's belligerence, and are hostile to China (India, Vietnam, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Indonesia) or are skeptics of China (Australia, New Zealand)

Seems if you say anything negative about China even if completely accurate on HN you get downvoted. Yes China has assisted NK:

http://freebeacon.com/national-security/china-sold-trucks-us...

It's relatively common on most social media sites including HN, reddit, etc. It was particularly noticeable during the coverage of China's DDoS attack on github a few years back.

Alternatively they may have got engines from Ukraine https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/14/world/asia/north-korea-mi...

There was a great podcast on NYTimes' The Daily about new advancements in the rocket engines used – their conclusion is that with Ukraine in flux, the source of Russia's missile engines (which Russia has recently stopped buying) are selling them off to North Korea, or an intermediary.

In the 60s Russia and the US manufactured thousands with 60s technology. North Korea has access to enough ore to make good enough metals and knowledge from history of what works.

The difficult part for them is propellants. Historically they’ve used kerosene and nitric acid but the newer rockets use hydrazine compounds and dinitrogen tetroxide oxidiser, which means either they’ve advanced their chemical industry a lot or they’ve found a supplier.

Do you listen to Arms Control Wonk? It's a podcast; they go deep, deep into the weeds of these missiles and what we know about them. In one podcast recently they talked about the cooperation between Iran and North Korea.

We really need to start punishing China for keeping North Korea alive. That country would collapse in a week without any food/fuel from China.

Good thing Donald Trump has started on that

"Donald Trump 'willing to cut off trade' with China to reign in despotic North Korea"

http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/853919/World-War-3-North...

I wonder if anyone in Beijing has thought through the idea that someday maybe a nuclear armed NK deciding it doesn't want to play nice with them anymore.

Like, if Saddam had nukes he'd probably still be alive.

Not fun to wake up to a missile flying over my house here in Hokkaido XD

I don't know how this going to end, but it feels weird to be in the crosshairs as collateral damage in a proxy war.

Japan is not really collateral. North Korea hates Japan apart from the US. In fact it's really the US that's collateral.

huh... I am feeling uninformed. Could you enlighten me why this is the case?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korea_under_Japanese_rule

Neither is true. The DPRK isn't trying to pursue a war against its enemies in a military sense. They're trying to extort money from the world community as a price for peace.

True. It's all about extortion.

Oh, well, yeah, I mean the US still isn't quite collateral though...

North Korea has limited directional options if they want a realistic missle test.

Having one overfly Japan may just be the least politically bad option they have.

Other paths would be toward China, Russia, Taiwan, Phillipines, etc.

Completely offtopic, but where in Hokkaido? I was in Sapporo back about 15 years ago. Most people I've met have only been to Honshu.

Sapporo squad!!! So cool to hear it. I spent all summer biking around the country side, really unique people and perspectives around here.

Have been interested in Hokkaido ever since it was a level in Splinter Cell haha.

It's cheap living here, but I guess I chose the wrong moment to be airbnb'ing in what is otherwise an extremely peaceful region :)

>The missile is likely to have reached an altitude of about 770km (478 miles)

For reference, the International space station is about 220 miles above earth. This missile went twice as high.

Why does a missile need to go so damn high? Do all of them do that or only this because it was a test?

Wild guess from the highly relevant experience of having played Kerbal Space Program: if you don't actually intend to achieve orbit (which is mostly about going sideways really fast, not up) it may be more fuel-efficient to reach your target by going relatively high, to lengthen the amount of time you spend in little/no atmosphere before coming back down. Or maybe you want to be going really fast on the way down for some reason. Or (relatedly) it's harder to shoot down a missile on that kind of trajectory than a flatter one.

Going down really fast has an excellent reason: the faster you go down, the less time a counter-missile has to intercept you, and the harder it is (speed and acceleration requirements become insane).

It's a test. You can extrapolate the actual range when you change the launch angle to one that is optimal for distance.

Higher = Shorter Range while allowing for the significant burn of a longer range capability [1]

So you can test or show off something really powerful, that you don't want to actually hit anything important by shooting it straight up. That's why many of these are considered "Space Launches." Otherwise if you shoot low altitude you only get a single or possibly second stage tested.

[1]http://www.mpoweruk.com/figs/ballistics.htm

I'm guessing one reason is that going high rather then far keeps the rocket in line of site for telemetry.

Getting that high has a couple of advantages:

1) You conserve fuel by following a specfiic flight path and it has the added benefit of also getting out of the atmosphere. The ballistic trajectory that they follow is the minimum-energy trajectory. Putting this another way, you maximise payload for a given amount of fuel, and so can deliver a bigger warhead for a given rocket. Additionally, why plough through half a sphere of air when you can get up and out? The advantage of their extreme range is that they escape the atmosphere and so don't deal with atmospheric drag the whole way.

2) Intercepting something coming down from above is far harder than intercepting something coming at you from down low, so it has that added benefit.

I'm sure there's other advantages, but they're the ones that spring to mind immediately.

I'm currently on a ship sailing through the Bering Sea and down through the north Pacific towards Hokkaido over the next week or so. I am not sure if we should be more worried about typhoon Talim or North Korea :)

Red sky at noon means nukes you're DOOMED!

Red sky in morning, deterrence is thorny.

So immediately the US dollar falls against the yen and gold goes up. Why?

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/14/asia-markets-focus-on-north-...

I mean, I know why, except this is the just the bazillionth time that NK has "cried wolf". I just can't muster the level of panic all the headlines demand.

Quick! Somebody suggest Moar Sanctions that the Chinese will go on ignoring.

North Korea is a joke to our civilization world, can't imaging why it's still there playing fire.

Because they haven't gotten burnt yet.

I heard an interesting psychological profile of Hitler once, and the person said he didn't actually want to win. He had horrible means, so why assume he didn't have a horrible goal(losing, consciously or subconsciously)? I think North Korea's leader has horrible means, and may have a horrible goal, some sort of suicide where he destroys his whole country via the USA. Him thinking he can capture Guam is perhaps only possible to believe if he has really bad thinking. He has really bad ways of dealing with his people, so it's possible he is subconsciously trying to destroy himself.

I actually agree. People are applying rational thought to an irrational person and we know how well that usually works out.

Nuclear MAD doesn't work when leaders really are mad.

I'm not sure KJU is mad in the Hitler sense, but he's the narcissistic scion of a narcissistic pseudo-monarchy, and it may be unwise to expect rational foresight.

What is it that makes you believe he is irrational? Just curious because I can come up with some pretty rational arguments for most of his actions.

He might have flaming words but he knows all too well that nuclear weapons and missiles are his only defense against the US, and esp. someone like Trump

Look at any other country that has given up its nuclear program. Khadafi, Saddam Hussein are here no more. Kim Jong-Un knows well too well that if he gave in to american demands, his regime will end.

This is an excellent article with more details on this : https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/08/in-the-court-o...

I've heard that too, Putin was saying that at a press conference. It makes sense, since we ran those other countries rampant after they gave up.

Still, that's an excuse to keep his nuclear program, not to try and capture Guam. Capturing Guam is a misguided goal, which could hint at a further addled mind.

There is a Batman cartoon wherein the Joker is taken under the wing of a popular psychologist who goes to great lengths to explain that the Joker is not evil, rather he is merely trying to express himself under the pressure exerted upon him by society personified by an aging purist known as the Batman. On live TV he executes the good doctor with a shattered coffee cup before murdering the audience with poison gas.

It is always dangerous to use entertainment fiction as an analog to reality. Nonetheless, I cannot help but feel revulsion when a pampered, armchair sociologist tries to handwave the destructive tendencies of a poorly informed autocrat as some kind of grandiose, suicidal tendency.

The latest round of intercontinental saber rattling is not a product of rampant psychopathy; it is iteration of a proven methodology.

I think it is simpler than that.

It's pure survival for himself and his dynasty, just like it was for King Jong-Il and Kim Il-Sung.

If the regime collapses and Kim brought to justice, he'll be executed along with any family members and anyone involved in the horrors the North Korean people have had to face.

He's using an entire country as a bargaining chip to ensure he remains in power, safe and protected from outside interference.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com