North Korea launches warship after earlier failed attempt
North Korea has launched a warship two weeks after it was damaged during an earlier launch attempt, in an incident that drew harsh criticism from the country's leader Kim Jong Un.The 5,000-tonne destroyer, which was restored to balance earlier this week, was launched on Thursday and is now moored at a pier, state-run news agency KCNA said.The ship is expected to be fully restored before a ruling party meeting sometime this month, KCNA added.Kim, who witnessed the warship tipping over during the first launch attempt, criticised the incident as a "criminal act" that "severely damaged the [country's] dignity and pride".
It was the result of "absolute carelessness, irresponsibility and unscientific empiricism", he said. At least four officials including Ri Hyong-son, the deputy director of the ruling Workers' Party's Munitions Industry Department, have been arrested over the incident.Mr Ri is part of the party's Central Military Commission, which commands the Korean People's Army and is responsible for developing and implementing North Korea's military policies.It is not clear what punishment the officials might face, but the authoritarian state has been known to sentence officials it finds guilty of wrongdoing to forced labour and even death.The effort to right the ship was a manual process, according to researchers from 38 North, a website run by the US-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University in the US. Satellite imagery shows workers on the quay pulling tethers and using barrage balloons to bring the vessel back to balance, they said, adding that some of the balloons appeared to still be attached to the vessel.Some analysts saw Kim's swift and severe response to the earlier failed launch as a signal that Pyongyang would continue to advance its military capabilities.The regime is "deeply invested in the image of a rising military power" and the failure may harden their resolve to push that forward, says Jihoon Yu, a research fellow at the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses.Kim's "unusually severe" response to the failure is aimed at protecting the leader's image and reasserting his authority, he adds. Michael Madden, a North Korea expert from the Stimson Center in Washington, sees Kim's response as a sign of the "high priority" his regime is putting into developing warships.Just weeks before the botched launch, Pyongyang had unveiled a similar warship in another part of the country.Kim called that warship a "breakthrough" in modernising North Korea's navy and said it would be deployed early next year.
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Through the Forty-third and Forty-fourth Amendments, it rolled back key parts of the Forty Second, scrapping authoritarian provisions and restoring democratic checks and was swept back to power in January 1980, after the Janata Party government collapsed due to internal divisions and leadership struggles. Curiously, two years later, prominent voices in the party again mooted the idea of a presidential 1982, with President Sanjiva Reddy's term ending, Gandhi seriously considered stepping down as prime minister to become president of India. Her principal secretary later revealed she was "very serious" about the move. She was tired of carrying the Congress party on her back and saw the presidency as a way to deliver a "shock treatment to her party, thereby giving it a new stimulus".Ultimately, she backed down. Instead, she elevated Zail Singh, her loyal home minister, to the serious flirtation, India never made the leap to a presidential system. Did Gandhi, a deeply tactical politician, hold herself back ? Or was there no national appetite for radical change and India's parliamentary system proved sticky? There was a hint of presidential drift in the early 1970s, as India's parliamentary democracy - especially after 1967 - grew more competitive and unstable, marked by fragile coalitions, according to Prof Raghavan. Around this time, voices began suggesting that a presidential system might suit India better. The Emergency became the moment when these ideas crystallised into serious political thinking."The aim was to reshape the system in ways that immediately strengthened her hold on power. There was no grand long-term design - most of the lasting consequences of her [Gandhi's] rule were likely unintended," Prof Raghavan told the BBC."During the Emergency, her primary goal was short-term: to shield her office from any challenge. The Forty Second Amendment was crafted to ensure that even the judiciary couldn't stand in her way."The itch for a presidential system within the Congress never quite faded. As late as April 1984, senior minister Vasant Sathe launched a nationwide debate advocating a shift to presidential governance - even while in power. But six months later, Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards in Delhi, and with her, the conversation abruptly died. India stayed a parliamentary democracy.
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