Yonhap News:
A key indicator of progress to look for in North Korea’s potential long-range rocket launch is whether the rocket would re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere, a technology essential to the development of intercontinental ballistic missiles, a U.S. expert said Monday.
Concerns have grown that the North could launch a long-range rocket, possibly around next month’s ruling party anniversary, after Pyongyang said earlier this month it has the right to the peaceful use of space and would launch satellites.
Such launches are banned under U.N. Security Council resolutions as Pyongyang has long been accused of using long-range rocket launches as a pretext for test-firing intercontinental ballistic missiles. Experts say long-range rockets and ICBMs are basically the same with differences only in payloads.
“There is one area where satellite launches might make a major contribution to North Korea’s ICBM program,” John Schilling, a U.S. aerospace engineer, said in a report carried by 38 North, a website run by the U.S.-Korea Institute at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies…
