Japan Protests

Japan protests NKorea's rocket launch plan. Japan thinks the launch could fail for an incoming North Korean rocket, but analysts said the communist country will go ahead with a planned April launch with little fear of the consequences. The North announced this week it will send a satellite into orbit between April 4-8. The rocket's first stage is expected to fall in waters less than 75 miles (120 kilometers) from Japan's northwestern shore, according to coordinates Pyongyang provided to U.N. agencies. The other zone where the second stage should fall lies in the middle of the Pacific Ocean between Japan and Hawaii. The U.S. and other governments have warned that any rocket launch whether missile test or satellite would violate a 2006 U.N. Security Council resolution banning North Korea from ballistic missile activity. Japan, which was shaken in 1998 when a North Korean missile flew over its territory and landed in the Pacific, has since moved to develop missile defense capabilities with some success. It downed a ballistic missile from a ship at sea in a 2007 test. Ultimately, a successful satellite launch would provide North Korea with the upper hand in its future negotiations with the U.S. as it would mean the country could show it has a delivery vehicle for its nuclear weapons, according to Paik Hak-soon, a North Korea expert at the private think tank Sejong Institute near Seoul.