By Trefor Moss
South Korea doesn’t usually dignify the North’s shows of force by responding in kind. However, North Korea’s launch of the Unha-3 rocket earlier this month ultimately proved to be more a show of weakness than a show of force, the rocket’s failure alerting the world to little more than Pyongyang’s technological deficiencies.
Seoul evidently couldn’t resist the temptation to highlight the contrast between its own cutting-edge military systems and Pyongyang’s dull blades: while the North makes a lot of noise about systems that don’t work, the South quietly but effectively develops systems that do.
So Seoul’s unveiling of the Hyunmu-3C cruise missile on April 19 was basically an almighty put-down, a rebuke to the misguided fanfare that the North had whipped up around its non-functioning rocket. The missile has a range of up 1,000 to 1,500 kilometers, enabling it to strike anywhere within North Korean territory and giving Seoul the ability to knock out rockets like the Unha-3 on the launch pad. Kim Jong-un probably wishes the South had made use of this capability before the Unha-3 had the chance to blast off.
Read the full story at The Diplomat