By Jun Ji-hye
North Korea remained silent, Thursday, about the ballistic missile it launched the previous day, raising speculation that the launch may have failed.
The North’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) conventionally unveils reports and photos about the Kim Jong-un regime’s missile launches a day after they take place in an apparent bid to show off its military strength.
But the state media did not release any comments on the latest launch, leading outside experts to cautiously conclude that it ended in failure.
Kim Dong-yup, an analyst at the Institute for Far Eastern Studies at Kyungnam University, raised two possibilities with regard to the North’s silence.
“A failed launch could have been the reason for the KCNA not reporting anything, but there is another possibility that there was no report probably because Kim Jong-un did not observe the test,” he said.
Citing unnamed U.S. defense officials, AFP as well as Japan’s Kyodo News also reported the missile suffered an in-flight failure before crashing into the East Sea.
On Wednesday, the North launched the missile, which flew about 60 kilometers, according to the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS). Both the JCS and the U.S. Pacific Command issued their initial assessment that it was a KN-15 medium-range missile, called the Pukguksong-2 by the North.
But foreign news reports suggest that the missile is believed to be a Scud-ER (extended range).
The JCS maintained its initial assessment. “There is no additional information to provide other than that a further analysis is under way, as I said yesterday,” Col. Roh Jae-cheon, the JCS spokesman, said.