North Korea has been testing missiles since President Trump took office in January 2017. Kim Jong Un has been trying to develop an inter-continental missile that could potentially hit the U.S. Most of the missiles have landed into the Sea of Japan. One actually traveled across Japan before landing into the ocean. The Shock Exchange always wondered what would happen if one of the missiles went awry. Apparently, Kim Jong Un accidentally hit one of his own cities in April 2017:
Forget reaching the US mainland, one errant North Korean missile went rogue last year and crashed into a city not far from the capital, Pyongyang, according to a report.
A Hwasong-12 intermediate-range ballistic missile turned itself into a very-short-range rocket when it failed during a test flight on April 28, 2017, and slammed into the city of Tokchon, according to The Diplomat magazine.
The missile, which was launched from the Pukchang airfield, flew just 24 miles before taking a nosedive and striking a complex of industrial or agricultural buildings, the mag reported.
According to a US government source with knowledge of the hermit kingdom’s weapons program, the missile’s first-stage engines failed after about a minute of flight.
The location of the missile’s impact was revealed exclusively to The Diplomat, which said it corroborated the flub using commercially available satellite imagery from April and May 2017.
Although the images show that the explosion caused heavy damage in the heavily populated area, there is no way to tell if it led to casualties.
The missile was supposed to land in the Sea of Japan, near the Russian coast. Media outlets around the globe reported that the test had failed, yet the details remained a mystery. Much about North Korea is mystery. We know that the country is impoverished and has been decimated by economic sanctions levied by the United States. Previous missile tests by Kim Jong Ill – Jong Un’s father – were nothing more than saber rattling and an attempt to extract aid from the U.S. and others.
Kim Jong Un might be on a different mission. He could be attempting to test President Trump’s preparedness in case North Korea really wanted war. Another angle could be that a good offense makes for a good defense. He does not want to share the same fate as Iraq’s Saddam Hussein or Libya’s Muammar Gadaffi. Both were assassinated and the U.S. was involved. Kim Jong Un feels that with the nuclear capability of striking the U.S. it could act as a deterrent against the U.S. trying to take him out; if Iraq and Libya had the capability of striking the U.S. with equal force then Hussein and Gaddafi might still be alive, or so the logic goes.
Jong Un claims to have the capability of striking the U.S. with a nuclear warhead. The scary part is that one of his failed tests could potentially strike South Korea or Japan, and lead to an unintended provocation in the region. Jong Un tested a hydrogen bomb in September that created an earthquake in his own country. Given that backdrop there might not be a military option for our “North Korea problem.” Financial markets like the Dow Jones (DJIA) and S&P 500 (SPY) no longer react to the missile tests; Jong Un is almost like “the boy who cried wolf” at this point. That said, diplomacy could be the only solution, and neither Kim Jong Un or President Trump appear to want to go that route.
On Trump And The Global Economy
Trump And The Global Economy Town Hall took place October 24th in Fort Greene. It Featured Professor Lance Brofman, Coconut Rob (Coconut Rob Smoothies), Wuyi Jacobs (AfroBeats Radio) and Ralph Baker, author of Shock Exchange: How Inner-City Kids From Brooklyn Predicted the Great Recession and the Pain Ahead.
The event was well-received by the community. We parsed through President Trump’s proposed tax plan and [i] how it was pure economic folly and [ii] high net worth individuals could potentially game the system by shifting income around. Apparently, Kansas Coach Bill Self did this when the state of Kansas cut taxes in the past. We discussed the pros and cons of technology on workers and the economy. How will the economy and country prosper under Trump’s leadership vis-a-vis Obama? What’s behind the verbal sparring with black athletes, ESPN’s Jemele Hill and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un?
