The plot thickens. As I pointed out in my original blog, all is not what it seems in the conventional media narrative about North Korean space launches and missile tests. The Yomiuri in “DPRK ‘told U.S. about plan on Dec. 15′” has just done some important work in revealing that it may well be that the United States knew as early as mid-December about this April’s North Korean satellite launch. The story reads as follows:

“WASHINGTON–A senior North Korean government official informed the United States before the death of Kim Jong Il was announced in December of its plan to launch a satellite, according to a former senior U.S. government official.
In an article for a U.S. research institute, Evans Revere, who served as acting assistant secretary of state under the administration of President George W. Bush, wrote that the decision to carry out the launch is highly likely to have been made by the late North Korean leader.
…Revere met with the North Korean official on Dec. 15 and was told about the planned launch of what some people believed to be a missile. The meeting is believed to have taken place in New York…”

This fits entirely in with standard practice by media, partly because it’s a great story, to hype the DPRK threat, (remember the original Taepodon incident of 1998 was not a shock at all, it was a trigger)  which is used by Japan’s political establishment (rightly, in my opinion) to promote further strategic investment and spending in Japan’s defense capabilities. Ultimately, and very indirectly of course, this is fed by nationalism and fear of abandonment. Those specters lurk very deep in the background. But they are there, nonetheless.

This whole prearranged dance is not what it seems at all…

….While a minor and enjoyable subroutine of my job as a researcher is to look at how politicians and the media work to manufacture opinion one of the hazards and joys is looking at the some of the dire rubbish that is fed to otherwise intelligent readers by the dregs of the media, I feel it’s important to keep some sort of sensible narrative up about important incidents such at the DPRK’s satellite launch. The whole idea about deploying PAC-3 to Okinawa to defend Japan is made-up media guff but the launch over the Yellow Sea will provide the MSDF with a valuable tracking and training opportunity, while there is no threat to Japan or its southernmost island chain at all.

For your amusement:

If you did read the CNN piece about those good ol’ Eagis ships protecting us from the commies, you would have also learned from CNN International that the North Koreans were planning “a rocket-powered satellite launch.” Or was that The Daily Telegraph?  Well hot dog!

It looks like the Taepodon Trigger #3 is fully in effect in both Japan and the ROK meanwhile.