US experts who have been carefully studying North Korea’s released video footage of a submarine-fired ballistic missile test have concluded the video is faked, heavily altered to cover up a failure.
California’s James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies pointed out that two frames of video from the film show flames engulfing the missile and parts of it falling off before the video continues with the missile suddenly and inexplicably fine.
“The rocket ejected, began to light, and then failed catastrophically,” noted one of the center’s research associates Melissa Hanham, saying North Korea used “heavy video editing to cover over this fact.” They concluded North Korea is likely still several years from having ballistic missile submarine capabilities.
The study on the video suggested that not only did they alter the failed launch to appear like a success, but that they then flipped recycled footage of other missile tests to claim several successful launches, when they only even attempted the one.