First off, here\u2019s a map showing how far North Korea\u2019s various missile systems can reach. The outermost green circle indicates the range of the Musudan: It includes Japan and South Korea but not Guam or Hawaii and certainly not the U.S. mainland.<\/p>\n
The Musudan, though tested, is not thought to be particularly accurate. Still, it could cause some terrible mayhem in South Korea or even Japan if it were launched.<\/p>\n What about the range of the KN-08? Well, here\u2019s the thing about that: It sure looks like an intercontinental ballistic missile, and North Korea claims it can reach about 6,000 miles, which puts Los Angeles in range, except that no one knows if it works because it\u2019s never been tested. And that means it probably can\u2019t hit squat at long range, if it can even take off.<\/p>\n New ICBM models aren\u2019t like iPhones; you don\u2019t just take them out of the box and expect them to function properly. They have to be rigorously, painstakingly tested. Markus Schiller, an expert in the North Korean military, told Global Security Newswire that it was \u201ctotally impossible<\/a>\u201d for the KN-08 to be operational without tests. Even countries that have successfully built and launched ICMBs before, which North Korea has not, wouldn\u2019t expect a new model to work perfectly on the first try. The KN-08 was just unveiled last April in a military parade in Pyongyang and has never been test-launched. Analysts aren\u2019t even sure that it\u2019s real.<\/p>\n The most bullish analysis of the KN-08\u2032s potential threat that I\u2019ve seen this week, published<\/a> in the Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun, speculated that North Korea had only moved them to the coast so that, in the event of a test launch, they would be less likely to fall onto North Korean soil.<\/p>\n![\"n](\"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/n-korea-missiles-300x168.jpg\")
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