[FPSPACE] North Korea affirms successful launch of Kwangmyongsong-2

[Keith Gottschalk]

     Let those of us fortunate enough to live in democracies be truly
thankful. 
Never let our daily irritations & exasperations with corruption,
compromise, & spin doctors, make us romanticise dictatorships.

    Indeed, even the Soviet Government, then running a one-party police
state, never went beyond claiming that a satellite, whose radio
transmission failed, was a success. It censored the inevitable few
failures, it never claimed phantom launches into orbit. Similarly, the
Chinese Government, running a (de facto) one-party police state, has
never falsely claimed a failed launch really reached orbit. It at most
simply claimed that a failure was all the fault of a western company
whose payload it failed to launch!

   The press statement below was presumably aimed at a domestic
audience. Any north Korean who manages to illegally listen to foreign
radio broadcasts, or illegally access FPSPACE archives on the internet,
& so learns the contrary, will keep his secret to himself until the
current dictator passes away.   

- Keith

>Pyongyang May 7 (KCNA) -- A spokesman for the Korean Committee of
Space Technology issued a statement on 
>Thursday ...
>It says:
>As already reported, scientists and technicians of the DPRK
successfully put Kwangmyongsong-2, an experimental 
>communications satellite, into orbit of space. [....] the putting of
satellite into orbit and experimental communications by a 
>satellite through the launch of Kwangmyongsong-2 and thus made a giant
stride forward in the activities for the 
>development of outer space for peaceful purposes.