Prepare For Launch? North Koreans Asked to Raise Flags

The North Korean leadership has told its people to raise the national flag at 2pm (1500 AEST) on Sunday, in what may be a sign that Pyongyang will go ahead with a missile launch test, a Japanese government official was quoted as saying.
Japanese daily Sankei Shimbun also quoted the Japanese official as saying that the North Koreans had been instructed to monitor television and other broadcasts for a “message to the people”.

North Korea prepares to test missile that can reach USA
Seoul: North Korea loaded booster rockets onto a launch pad, preparing to test as early as Sunday a missile that might be able to reach the US mainland, media reported.
The reports follow US government warnings that the communist North is accelerating preparations to test a Taepodong-2 missile.
A US government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said on Friday that a test may be imminent. South Korea’s Chosun Ilbo newspaper said intelligence authorities of Seoul and Washington had made the assessment, based on satellite images, that the North had loaded booster rockets onto a launch pad and moved 10 large tanks of liquid fuel close by.
The Taepodong-2 is a three-stage missile, but the warhead section hadn’t been loaded yet, the paper said, quoting an unidentified high-level South Korean government official. South Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman Choo Kyu-ho couldn’t confirm the report.
Japan’s Foreign Minister and the US ambassador to Japan on Saturday called North Korea’s possible missile test a provocative action, and Tokyo urged Pyongyang through diplomatic channels not to proceed with the launch, news reports said.
Japan’s Foreign Minister Taro Aso and US Ambassador to Japan Thomas Schieffer met on Saturday evening.
Japan’s concern can be traced back to 1998, when North Korea test-fired a Taepodong-1 ballistic missile over northern Japan, claiming it was a satellite launch. There were reports that Japan had dispatched two Aegis destroyers to the Sea of Japan and Pacific Ocean.

NK warned over ‘provocative’ test (CXN/AP)

TOKYO, Japan — The U.S. and Japan both urged North Korea to halt preparations for a test-launch of a long-range missile, after Japanese and South Korean news reports said the North had loaded booster rockets onto a launch pad and could test-fire the missile as early as Sunday.
Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso warned North Korea on Sunday Tokyo would regard any missile that dropped on Japan as an attack, the Reuters news service reported.
“If it is dropped on Japan, it will complicate the story. It will be regarded as an attack,” Aso said on a Fuji TV program.
“The possibility is not zero of a missile dropping on Japan. That’s why we are worried,” Aso said on the program, according to Reuters.
North Korean officials, however, denied that preparations for a launch of a Taepodong-2 missile — with the capacity to reach the U.S. — were under way, according to a South Korean lawmaker quoted by Japan’s Kyodo News service.

Wild Thing’s comment…..
A president with spine and foresight could have solved this problem in 1993 and 1994. Unfortunately we were stuck with Clinton. He sent the preening Carter; Kim Il Sung laughed and made a total fool of him. And here we are 12 years later, just about to fall within range of North Korean nuclear weapon delivery systems perfected after Carter “solved” the problem and got his standing ovation from the assembled clowns in Oslo.