Are North Korean Missiles Guided by Russias Hands?
By Jim Mann Published: September 8, 2000 (Issue # 601) AT the moment, some of the world’s leading experts on missile technology are intensively studying an explosive theory about North Korea’s infamous missiles. It is a hypothesis with far-reaching ramifications for American diplomacy, but also one that sounds almost like a Hollywood movie script. It goes like this: The North Korean missiles – the ones that frightened Japan and prompted the United States to begin thinking seriously about missile-defense systems – aren’t really North Korean at all. They’re Russian, secretly built with Russian components and the active and ongoing help of some errant Russian scientists inside North Korea. Under this theory (and here’s the Hollywood plot), a rogue team of Russian missile scientists – thrown out of work after the collapse of the Soviet Union – may have moved to North Korea. And there, for profit or glory or both, they have directed the North Korean program – with the North Koreans themselv
