A North Korean missile reportedly crashed into one of its own cities after it failed just minutes following its launch.
US officials said the Hwasong-12 intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) was initially thought to have disintegrated mid-flight after it was fired on 28 April last year.
However, new data suggests it landed in the city of Tokchon, around 90 miles north of the secretive communist country’s capital, Pyongyang. Tokchon has a population of around 200,000.
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North Korea Accidentally Hit One of its Own Cities With a Missile, Says Report
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(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday January 07 2018, @09:48AM (5 children)
Someone was shooting at the Dear Leader, but got the wrong city?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 07 2018, @10:14AM
Kim's immediate whereabouts are a secret. There's no target to shoot at.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 07 2018, @10:44AM
I can see the future of your ass. You see a box of graham crackers in your hallway and realize that if you walk past it, you must let a large black man fuck your asshole. You decide to run past the box of graham crackers and are immediately apprehended by said black man. The man strips you naked and spreads your cheeks, but then loudly exclaims "There is no hole!" As the man is distracted, you run into a closet and hide. The man soon follows, but bumps into a cabbage patch kid and angers it. You decide to escape while the cabbage patch kid turns the man's ass into a rumblehouse. You know that the cabbage patch kid is furious with you as well, so you dash out of your house. A car driven by a close friend pulls in front of your house and offers you a ride in your time of need. The car speeds down the road initially, but eventually slows down to a crawl. You panic, but your friend simply grins. "Now, now, now's the time right now! What slowness can I offer you? I'm Copyright Owner Madow!" he says. Your friend then reveals himself to be an old man in a butler's outfit, and starts transforming into a toy. You decide to get out of the car and are then flung ass-first around the world at the speed of light! Eventually, your bootyass crashes into the very cabbage patch kid you were trying to escape from, and it turns your ass into a bouncehouse, thereby inflicting phenomenal amounts of tickle upon it!
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 07 2018, @11:46PM (2 children)
Nope just the chinese helping with with missile development. Xichang 1996.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 08 2018, @01:36AM (1 child)
Thanks for the hint. Eyewitness account here (is this the explosion you were thinking of?):
https://www.airspacemag.com/history-of-flight/disaster-at-xichang-2873673/?all [airspacemag.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 08 2018, @02:22AM
Yes, that's the one.
(Score: 1, Troll) by realDonaldTrump on Sunday January 07 2018, @11:35AM (1 child)
One thing about missiles -- which are a kind of rocket -- you have to test them A LOT if you want them to work right. Even after they're perfected, you keep testing them. To make sure they still work. And when a test goes wrong, it can make a big mess. We test our missiles by launching them from California to our islands in the Pacific. So they're never near anything that matters. Little Rocket Man is a smart cookie. He knows that if he messes up anything of ours -- if it even looks like he's about do do that -- he'll be in big trouble. The likes of which this world has never seen. He knows. He knows very well. So he tested his missile on one of his own cities. To see how much damage it would do. Let me tell you, it didn't do much. Broke some glass in a greenhouse. Something for people in glass houses to worry about. The rest of us are fine. We'll be fine, folks. Believe me, I have a much bigger "button" than he does. And mine works much better. I can tell my guys at the Pentagon, get rid of Little Rocket Man. And in less than an hour, no more Little Rocket Man. No more North Korea.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 07 2018, @12:18PM
> if it even looks like he's about do do that
I see what you did there.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Sunday January 07 2018, @01:31PM (2 children)
http://articles.latimes.com/1986-07-30/news/mn-18788_1_u-s-navy-missile [latimes.com]
The Sidewinder air-to-air missile, fired from an F-14 jet as part of Navy exercises, left a 2 1/2-foot hole in the superstructure of the Western Sun, which was cruising in the Atlantic 60 miles east of Norfolk, Lt. Cmdr. Bill Sonntag said in a statement.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by khallow on Sunday January 07 2018, @05:02PM (1 child)
(Score: 3, Funny) by c0lo on Monday January 08 2018, @05:28AM
You're missing the.... umm... bigger picture here.
Theretimes, a different country managed to hit a small US vessel.
30 years after, the NK needed a whole city as the target and a heck of a bigger rocket to do something of the same nature.
(large grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Funny) by RS3 on Sunday January 07 2018, @01:46PM (10 children)
Tokchon
hashad a population of around 200,000.FTFY.
(Score: 3, Informative) by KiloByte on Sunday January 07 2018, @02:20PM (9 children)
The missile's warhead didn't explode, only the fuel did, limiting the damage to a single building.
Ceterum censeo systemd esse delendam.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday January 07 2018, @05:07PM (7 children)
If the story is correct, several buildings in a complex would be damaged. And I doubt they had a warhead on board. That's something for potential foes to collect since they're dropping these into the ocean. A dummy payload (perhaps even one soluble in salt water) leaves less data and serves the same purpose.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by frojack on Sunday January 07 2018, @07:01PM (6 children)
The article never specifically said how much damage there really was. There was one poor quality Google Earth image included in the story which had a caption that read
Tracing a link in TFA leads to a much better article [thediplomat.com] with slightly better pictures in google earth (Decimal Lat / Long 39.765654 / 126.273931 ) allows one to use Google Earth's historical imagery slider to show that area over the years, and it appears to be a small crop field, never having a building but once holding two large hay mounds or plastic sheeting green houses.
In fact there is nothing in the images or cited in the article to suggest this are as a landing site.
US government would have needed other sources (active tracking, clandestine reports from the area, etc) to pick this postage stamp sized plot as the likely crash site, and then go looking for changes. None of the images are convincing, not Google Earth's, and not the other un-specified source images in the linked article (above).
They probably sat on this news till some imagery found its way into google earth that they could claim as the source.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Sunday January 07 2018, @07:25PM
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday January 07 2018, @10:38PM (4 children)
So we have a disturbance significant enough to disappear a building (probably a cheap building as you noted above) close to the launch point at the time of launch, plus damage to neighboring buildings. You'll never get better evidence than this while the current NK government is in charge.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday January 08 2018, @05:09AM (3 children)
All the images were of the crash site, immediately after the launch date.
Nothing talked about damage at the launch site.
And google earth historical imagery shows no buildings on that indicated plot, other than tube and plastic seasonal green houses, the kind that are put up each winter and taken down each spring. The whole of which would fit in the back of a small truck.
As for a rip in the larger plastic sheeting green house, that didn't look all that significant to me either. Wind? IDK.
You could look into sets pf images taken days appart of any moderate sized city and find as much change.
Taken all together, there is just not enough in these pictures to say a rocket crashed there, unless you already KNEW it did from other sources.
Why did they have pictures of THIS same area days apart?
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday January 08 2018, @07:00AM (2 children)
Probably because someone was looking for this very thing (the 1996 Chinese accident is not ancient history) and willing to pay Google for it. Could be a national spy agency, could be a media business looking for a scoop, or merely someone with some spare cash.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 08 2018, @03:18PM (1 child)
You do know that Google doesn't own the satellites right? They just take the pictures from NASA (no copyright for government works) and use them.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday January 08 2018, @06:41PM
And? Yes, I do realize Google doesn't own satellites. There are multiple parties that could have gotten an explicit before and after scan of the region around the North Korean launch site. Or maybe Landsat 8 just scans that much.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 07 2018, @10:49PM
As has been said, it's unlikely one was mounted.
...and if that had been the plan, perhaps we have evidence of what happened to that device before it was delivered to the assembly site.
Handful of North Korean Defectors Show Signs of Radiation Exposure [soylentnews.org]
The Norks seem to be making their share of rookie mistakes WRT being a member of the nuke club.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 07 2018, @09:09PM
Before or after?