Missile in Alaska: A North Korea rumor

...one that I am guilty of spreading, I'm afraid to say. This one's been mixed up in my rants and I hope this post corrects the record.

From the Los Angeles Times

With Few N. Korea Facts, a Rumor Got Launched

A warhead found in Alaska? The report's longevity illustrates the uncertainty and fear.

By Barbara Demick
Times Staff Writer
July 7, 2006
Hisako Ueno of The Times' Tokyo Bureau contributed to this report.

SEOUL — The shocking rumor surfaced a few years back: A warhead from a North Korean ballistic missile had been found in the Alaskan tundra.

It made a few headlines before the U.S. Missile Defense Agency dismissed the story as a complete fabrication.

Nevertheless, the report still bounces around the Internet, a favorite of conservative blog sites. Its staying power illustrates the extent of the confusion about the North Korean weapons program.

>snip<

Wildly skewed estimates of the missile's range have appeared recently in the media, with some experts suggesting a range of as much as 6,000 miles — which would mean the projectile could reach Los Angeles.

The technical dispute predictably tends to be colored by political views.

Analysts in South Korea often put the range at no more than 2,400 miles, which, as far as U.S. interests are concerned, means the missile could reach Guam or possibly the sparsely inhabited western tip of Alaska's Aleutian Islands.

>snip<

Compounding the mystery, North Korea has long been considered a black hole as far as intelligence is concerned. Donald Gregg, a former CIA station chief in Seoul who now heads the New York-based Korea Society, has called North Korea the "longest-running intelligence failure" in the history of U.S. espionage.

Gary Samore, a former National Security Council aide and a nonproliferation expert, says that apart from satellites and other technical surveillance measures, there is little intelligence about North Korea's weapons program.

>snip<

As for a missile reaching Alaska?

The story about the warhead being found in Alaska first emerged in a report published by the South Korean National Assembly.

Kim Hak-won, an assemblyman who was the lead author of the report, said he had heard about the purported Alaskan discovery from Taro Nakayama, a former Japanese foreign minister.

Contacted recently, both men said they stood by the story. Nakayama said in an e-mail that he had heard about it from a State Department official he met during a trip to Washington a few months after North Korea's 1998 missile launch.

Kim said the Alaskan report showed that "clearly we have underestimated North Korea's missile capabilities."

Rick Lehner, a spokesman for the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, said the story had been investigated and discounted.

"I don't know how close it came to Alaska," he said, "but it was very far away."