Consumnes Connection:
North Korea ground tested a new type of high-power carrier rocket engine for launching of geostationary satellites Tuesday, but some suspect the North is working on long-range missiles.
“North Korea’s space program is focused on developing launch vehicles that can easily be used for missiles rather than developing decent satellites”, Chae said.
North Korea’s successful new tests are the latest in a line of rocket and nuclear testing, fuelling worries they could be created to guide weapons.
North Korea is under U.N and U.S sanctions, for nuclear tests conducted by the Communist state in 2012.
According to Yonhap News Agency, Ben Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser at the White House, said that in addition to the broader North Korea issue, Obama is expected to be “laying out why efforts to strengthen the norm against testing are important” and “why it’s important to hold countries accountable when they do violate global law, worldwide norms”.
Pyongyang’s new rocket engine could be for North Korea’s KN-08, or Hwasong-13, an ICBM which North Korea has yet to test.
NorthKorea claimed after its nuclear test this month that it had mastered the ability to mount a warhead on a ballistic missile, a worrying prospect for neighbors South Korea and Japan.
Joshua Pollack, editor of the US-based Nonproliferation Review, said North Korean media’s description of a rocket engine with 80 tonnes of thrust would make it “a very powerful rocket, well beyond anything the North Koreans have shown the world before”.
The Sept. 9 blast was in defiance of United Nations sanctions that were tightened in March.
“Regarding North Korea’s ballistic missile launch activities, at present the Security Council has explicit stipulations”….
