North Korea faked footage of submarine-launched missile test

Footage of a North Korean submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) test, released by Pyongyang two days after it announced it had conducted the country’s fourth nuclear test last week, was faked according to an analysis by a California-based think tank.

North Korea has said it has ballistic missile technology which would allow it to launch a nuclear warhead from a submarine. North Korean state television aired footage on Friday of the latest test, said to have taken place in December.

“The rocket ejected, began to light, and then failed catastrophically,” said Melissa Hanham, a senior research associate at the California-based Middlebury Institute’s James Martin Centre for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS).

South Korea’s military said on Saturday North Korea appeared to have modified the video and edited it with Scud missile footage from 2014. The CNS analysis shows two frames of video from state media where flames engulf the missile and small parts of its body break away.

“North Korea used heavy video editing to cover over this fact,” Hanham said in an email. “They used different camera angles and editing to make it appear that the launch was several continuous launches, but played side by side you can see that it is the same event”.

It is also unclear if North Korea has developed a nuclear device small enough to mount on a missile.

[Reuters]

This entry was posted in DPRK Government by Grant Montgomery.