On July 4, 2006, Kim Jong-il test launched seven missiles, including the 118-ft.-long Taepodong-2 missile potentially capable of carrying a nuclear warhead. North Korean officials called it part of "regular military drills to strengthen self-defense."
The missiles mostly landed in Russian waters. Japan suspended contacts with the North and called for an emergency UN Security Council meeting, although Russia and China resisted calls for sanctions on North Korea.
The missile test – as with the Nov. 23, 2010, incident – was thought to be an attempt by Kim Jong-il to increase his bargaining power at approaching six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear program. "Kim wants more cards to play in the six-party talks. But I think he has now miscalculated," Jia Qingguo, associate dean of the international studies department at Beijing University, told the Monitor then. "Kim may think he is getting more cards. But I think this will only make the voice of the hard-liners in the US and Japan stronger."
As then-Beijing bureau chief Robert Marquand wrote: "Kim, like his father, runs his poor and isolated country on a complex principle of "self-reliance" called Juche, which has turned North Korea into something of a cult of personality. Kim can't afford to open his society as that could force changes that could undermine Juche. Yet North Korea is in a part of Asia that is modernizing rapidly – causing unknown strains on the North's system."
The same is being speculated of the most recent provocation, with Kim's son – and heir apparent – now seeking to project his own image.
