North Korean missile misinformation reflects tension Independent of defense system operation
By Kim Dong Hyun 2019.12.28
Experts in the United States say some of the press and US military recently issued false or false alarms about North Korea's missile launches because of tensions in the Korean peninsula. However, he says the incident has nothing to do with US missile defenses. Reporter Kim Dong-hyun.
On Sunday, Japan's public broadcaster, NHK, apologized for admitting it was a misnomer in 25 minutes after breaking news that North Korean missiles fell about 2,000 km east of Hokkaido.
In addition, according to the Washington Post newspaper, at the Camp Casey, a US military base in Dongducheon, South Korea, the 'air strike warning' emergency siren accidentally rang and caused the base to panic.
Lieutenant Colonel Martin Creeton, spokesman for the 2nd Infantry Division, said the emergency alarm siren rang because of a machine operation error.
Camp Casey is the closest US military unit to the DMZ.
David Maxwell, a senior research fellow at the Korea-US Combined Forces Operations, told VOA today the latest incident reflects heightened tensions on North Korea's threatened "Christmas gifts" and "new roads," as the "end-of-year deadline" approaches.
[Record: David Maxwell, Senior Researcher] "Given the high state of tension, you know, the Christmas gift and all the rhetoric surrounding that, when people hear an alarm, they assume the worst that something is happening."
Maxwell says false alarms arising from high tension can mislead the situation and cause unpredictable results.
[Record: David Maxwell, Senior Researcher] "People are at a heightened level of awareness and so when someone makes a mistake, it is really maximized in the media and among the people. So it is really why people need to be very cautious and they need to be on a high level of discipline in everything that they do. Because these minor seemingly minor mistakes can have effects that no one intends. "
Former White House weapons coordinator, Gary Samore, says the North's intentions to boost tensions have been successful.
But he says he still fails to get Trump to accept North Korea's denuclearization measures, which were rejected at the Hanoi talks.
[Record: Gary Samore Former Coordinator] "Well they are certainly succeeding in increasing tension. But so far, they failed to force the Trump Administration to accept North Korea's denuclearizing proposal and the whole point, the whole objective of North Korea's threat to resume testing is to force the Trump administration to accept the proposal that President Trump rejected at the Hanoi summit . So the North Korean campaign so far has been a failure. "
North Korea's ultimate goal of changing provocations by raising provocations by the end of the year is unsuccessful.
In January last year, a major confusion was caused by a ballistic missile warning that was mistakenly issued in the US. A road sign on Oahu said "no threat".
Meanwhile, the Washington Post reported that the false alarm was similar to a ballistic missile warning accident that was falsely issued in Hawaii on January 13 last year.
The incident turned out to be a mistake that occurred while a Hawaii State Emergency Management Agency (HEMA) employee was checking the alarm system during a work shift.
Thomas Karako, Missile Defense Projects Director, CSIS, a Washington-based private organization, answered VOA's questions about the impact of early warning system false alarms on the operation of strategic weapons or missile defense systems.
[Record: Thomas Karako, Director] "Our missile defense systems rely on multiple phenomenology. We are not going to be shooting things off on the basis of a faulty text message as we had in Hawaii or on the basis of false press report as we saw yesterday. So imputing any lack of reliability to our strategic deterrence or to our missile defense would be completely inappropriate. "
Karako says the US missile defense system does not work according to simple false alarm messages, such as Hawaii last year or recent accidents.
It dismisses some of the concerns that false alarms can cause accidental wars.
Karako says it is entirely inappropriate to question the reliability of US strategic assets or missile defenses because of the false alarm.
This is VOA News Kim Dong-hyun.
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