Opinion: Western Countries Underestimate North Korea’s Rocket Level
KWIC September 16 Toronto: What kind of rocket did North Korea use to launch its satellite? This has become the major concern for Japan, and the United States. Western source quoted the words believed as US intelligence source's that North Korea used the Taep'o-dong 1 rocket to launch the satellite. In fact, based on the careful data analysis of the pictures published by North Korea's Central News Agency, and on the comparison of those pictures with the ones taken by the US spy satellite and released in February, 1994, it is concluded that North Korea's missile technology is more advanced than the outside sources had estimated, at least by two to six years.

The rocket launch pictures published by North Korea's Central News Agency show that the rocket is consisted of two stages. However, North Korea claimed the rocket had three stages and Western media reported so, too. This might be because the small booster for the stage of the satellite was counted as the third stage. It is worth noting that this kind of booster system is also a piece of indispensable technology required for the MIRV and the range adjustment devices of the intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM).

In addition, as North Korea's official pictures show, the rocket looks very close, in terms of the lengths and sizes of the two stages, to the one in the pictures taken by the US spy satellite. Named Taep'o-dong 2 by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the first stage of the rocket in latter picture is 2.4m in diameter and 18m in length while the second stage is 1.3m in diameter and 14m in length. The total length of the rocket is 32m. This similarity indicates that North Korea may have used the different type of the Taep'o-dong 1 rocket to launch the satellite, although US officially claimed that it was Taep'o-dong 1. The Western intelligence institutions, including the CIA, all believed that the Taep'o-dong 2 still remained in the process of research and that its earliest trial launch would be sometime between the years from 2000 to 2004. Judging from the fuel tank volume estimated by its diameter, this CIA-named Taep'o-dong 2 is said to have a range of 4000 kilometers. This means that the Guam Island can be within its range( Edited by John Wu).