It said:

Despite the United States-initiated chorus of protests, the north Korean administration led by heaven-sent statesman and supreme leader Kim Jong Un will celebrate the centenary of the birth of its founding father Kim Il Sung by shooting off a spectacular firework; a polar-orbiting observation satellite is to be launched into space between April 12 and 16.

The Kim Jong Un administration does not share the view that the planned satellite launch imperils the February 29 north Korea-US nuclear agreement. The north Koreans are of the firm view that a Cold Warrior mindset has misled the Americans to mistake the launch of an observation satellite for that of a ballistic missile test.

When a carrier rocket leaves the launch pad, an international bevy of experts on space technology and journalists will have little difficulty in discerning whether this is a scientific satellite launch or an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) test. This will prove most embarrassing to the Barack Obama administration, the south Korean administration of Lee Myung-bak and the Japanese government.

　US's Overreaction Betrays Fear

　A north Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman in a March 31 statement accused the Obama administration of being afraid of objective verification of the peaceful nature of the satellite launch.

Fear accounts for the Americans' deliberate over-reaction to the north Korean satellite launch, the spokesman said. He cited two compelling facts, one being the order issued to the US's National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) not to send observers to north Korea and the other undue pressure brought upon other countries to follow suit.

He went on to describe the American portrayal of the peaceful satellite launch as a handy pretext to press for establishing a missile defense system in East Asia with a view to restarting the Cold War, in a bid to rescue a Pax Americana on the brink of collapse.

Full public knowledge that the payload of the north Korean Unha rocket is not a warhead but a pure observation satellite would pull the rug from the US case for a missile defense system.

Scott A Snyder, senior fellow for Korea studies and director of the program on US-Korea policy at the Council on Foreign Relations, recommended a pre-emptive strike on the north Korean carrier rocket perched on the launch pad in a March 22 article, "How to Stop north Korea's Satellite Test."

Bush also proposed a pre-emptive strike but refused to use it against north Korea armed to the teeth.

Snyder's crazy recommendations are based on a June 22, 2006, Washington Post op-ed piece of two Clinton-era top defense officials, former secretary of defense William J Perry and former assistant secretary of defense Ashton B Carter, headlined, "If Necessary, Strike and Destroy."

The irony is that the self-styled three hawks-come-lately are totally unaware that they sound like puppies unafraid of a tiger.

Whether they acknowledge it or not, north Korea is the fourth-most powerful nuclear weapons state, just after the US, Russia and China. north Korea is the sole state ready to engage the sole superpower in nuclear war with the US mainland transformed into the first theater of thermonuclear conflagration.

　Jaw-dropping Satellite Launch Technology

An invited bevy of overseas experienced experts on space technology and journalists will most likely find their jaws dropping when they are taken to a tour of the ultra-modern Sohae Satellite Launch Station, the general control and command center and allowed to observe the liftoff of a heavy-lift Unha rocket carrying an observation satellite. They will doubt their eyes at the sight of a highly sophisticated, shiny heavy-lift satellite launch vehicle lifting off, all its component parts and electronic gear, indigenously designed and produced.

Overseas space experts and media people will gain indisputable evidence that the north Korean rocket does not carry a warhead but a peaceful satellite as its payload. All the world will see that there is no factual basis in the allegations heaped on Pyongyang by Obama and company, which are similar to the pre-war hype by Bush and company presented to justify their invasion of Iraq.

The US has two options left to weigh as the north puts the final touches to preparations for the April 15 ceremony.

Terminating yet another nuclear deal, however, will lead to additional nuclear tests and long-range missile tests with enriched uranium enrichment churned out on an expanded basis and IAEA inspectors kicked out of the country for the third time.

The US can continue its all-too-familiar, counterproductive pattern of action of threats and move to railroad another resolution through the UN Security Council in a senseless bid to put the screws on north Korea. This will automatically be construed as a virtual declaration of war by the north Koreans. The Americans will face the worst-case scenario of risking nuclear annihilation in an election year.