THE launch of its threestage rocket on April 5th, North Korea declared, was an outstanding success. The experimental communications satellite sent into orbit was already beaming back revolutionary songs to a grateful nation, and rocket technicians were weeping “tears of joy Yet the United States, South Korea and Japan, over whose main island the rocket flew, said that the launch was a front for testing a Taepodong2 intercontinental ballistic missile. What is more, they claimed, it was a flop. The booster rocket appears to have dropped as it should have done into the Sea of Japan, but the rocket’s remaining stages along with its payload ditched in the Pacific some 3,200 kilometres 2,000 miles from the launchpad,

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