Asia: Missile Launch: Japan supine under NorKor's overpass (no new satellite set yet)

BBCNews reports "North Korea 'has launched rocket' (Apr5,2k9):

North Korea says it is sending a satellite into orbit, but its neighbours suspect the launch is a cover for a long-range missile test.

Japan, South Korea and the US condemned the launch as a provocative act.

America would take "appropriate steps to let North Korea know that it cannot threaten the safety and security of other countries with impunity", a US state department spokesman said.

Japan says it is seeking an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council.

A more geospecific geopacific thawt is reported by Linda Sieg and Jack Kim in Reuters (Apr5,2k9).

The United States, South Korea and Japan say the launch is actually the test of a Taepodong-2 missile, which is designed to carry a warhead as far as Alaska.

I can't help thinking that NorKor's strategic planners chose the date on which they would today overpass Japan (without permission to do so,of course), chose the date to eclipse the news-worthiness of the society of industrial nations at the forefront of the world economy, meeting vaingloriously at the G2 Summit.

But the overpassing of the country of Japan, whether or not one NorKor intention may be true in regard to the G2 conference on the world economic crisis, certainly the fly-over "the air space" of Japan--dropping 1st-stage rocketry before arc-ing over Japan's territory, then overpassing the furious country below it; and then the NorKor Missile also dropped its used-up 2nd-stage rocketry, plop into the Pacific, somewhere in the vast oceanic space between North Korea and the United States of America and Her Majesty's Dominion of Canada.

Meanwhilew, the NorKor Missile (NKM) is reportedly speeding on its way, presumably carrying a satellite to set into some strategic space-place, an orbit for possible 24-hour transmission. But, with the world press agog, no new NorKor satellite has yet appeared in the Heavens in orbit around Earth and independent of the rocket which may yet accomplish its stated mission. The latter's remains perhaps to later splash down somewhere on Earth again.

I'm watching this ongoing news-story with considerable interest (agog?)

-- Politicarp