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N KOREA LIKELY TO EMULATE IRAN'S SUCCESSFUL ROCKET LAUNCHSEOUL, Apr 02, 2009 (AsiaPulse via COMTEX) -- North Korea will likely succeed in its impending rocket launch as it has probably addressed most of its technical glitches through cooperation with Iran, experts said Thursday. Iran denies it has any relation with North Korea in missile development, but U.S. officials and analysts say intelligence points to extensive cooperation. Quoting a government source, Japanese media recently reported that a team of Iranian rocket scientists is in North Korea ahead of the launch of what Pyongyang calls a satellite between April 4-8. Iran sent its own communications satellite, Omid, into orbit on February 2, just weeks before North Korea announced its launch plan. North Korea had failed in an earlier test of an intercontinental ballistic missile in July 2006. "After the successful launch of the Iranian space launch vehicle, it is believed that the causes of the previous failure of (North Korea's) Taepodong-2 have been removed," Kim Byung-yong, a researcher at the state-funded Korea Institute for Defense Analyses, said in a report presented at a conference in Seoul. Omid is a two-stage rocket loaded with liquid fuel, while the North Korean rocket -- which in theory can easily be converted into a missile -- consists of three units, with the top being powered by solid fuel, Kim said. "The North Korean vehicle is larger and has a longer range, which means the payload is likely to be heavier and the rocket can be stationed higher in orbit," Kim said. Baek Seung-joo, a senior analyst with the same think tank, said North Korea and Iran appear to have begun joint development of long-range missiles since the early 2000s, noting their technological exchange has accelerated since then. "North Korea and Iran have completely ignored customary delays that countries maintain before sharing their rocket technology," Baek said by phone, citing his report released Wednesday evening. "It has come to a point where Iran is now re-exporting its technology to North Korea, which originally helped lay the groundwork for Iran's missile development," he said. (Yonhap) |