North Korea no longer hiding rocket, says US institute

A soldier stands next to a Japanese Self-Defence Force Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) missile unit in Iwate prefecture in northern Japan, yesterday.

Commercial satellite imagery suggests North Korea is no longer trying to hide the shape of a suspected missile it plans to launch as early as this weekend, according to a Washington-based arms control group. "The missile is clearly visible" in a satellite picture taken on Sunday of the launch site, the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) wrote on its website. "Since the missile is so easily seen in this image versus in imagery over the past several days since March 24, it is likely that North Korea was previously shrouding the missile." The commercial photos came from the Colorado-based company DigitalGlobe, which provides imagery for Google Earth, US government agencies and other customers. US intelligence and military officials declined to comment to AFP on the satellite imagery. North Korea has said it will send up a communications satellite over northern parts of Japan between April 4-8, but the United States and its Asian allies suspect the launch is a cover for testing a long-range ballistic missile test that could hit Alaska. Pyongyang threatened, in a statement carried by state radio today, to shoot down any US spy planes if they violate its airspace to monitor the imminent launch.

"Should the US imperialist racketeers dare to intrude espionage planes into our territorial sky, interfering with our preparations for a satellite launch for peaceful purposes, our revolutionary forces will shoot them down unsparingly," it said. The warning followed accusations on Tuesday that US planes had stepped up flights over a north-eastern region where the North is preparing the launch. The North has regularly published its count of spy flights by South Korea and the United States. The official Korean Central News Agency said that US and South Korean planes had conducted "intensive" espionage against strategic targets every day from March 9 to 20. Previous photos indicated that the rocket's three stages were about equal in length but the latest satellite image showed that was not the case, and that the nose cone was of significant size, said Geoffrey Forden, a research associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). "The first stage takes up about two-thirds of the missile," Mr Forden wrote on armscontrolwonk.com. "The third stage appears quite short with a fairly large nose cone fairing." The sophistication of the second stage of the rocket remained unclear, Mr Forden added. North Korea has warned that the first booster rocket would likely plunge into the Sea of Japan (East Sea) while the second stage would drop into the Pacific between Japan and Hawaii.

*AFP