North Korean rocket launch: the elaborate regime of deception

Following an intelligence investigation into the North Korean (NK) satellite launch earlier this month, it has emerged that elaborate deception tactics were used by NK in an attempt to catch the U.S. intelligence system off-guard in the run up to the launch.

The most extravagant of which was a monkey dressed in a $400 custom made sheepskin jacket, found in Toronto’s Ikea car park just a few days before the launch. After attracting much media attention the monkey was quickly scooped up by U.S. analysts amidst fears it was a ‘monkey spy’ who had alighted at the wrong bus stop on route to a nearby U.S. intelligence base.  Officials said: “Despite offering the finest bananas we can source, the monkey just won’t talk; however our satellites have been monitoring monkey training camps in North Korea for some time now and we are confident he is working under cover.”

No one suspects a monkey...

He added: “We first had our suspicions that they [NK] were developing underhand tactics after intercepting an email, which detailed an elderly man called Chang-see Moon, who has been tasked with tracking U.S. satellite orbits from a remote mountain shack for the past five years. He would reportedly sit and stare at the sky with his telescope for days on end, logging each satellite which flew overhead and then report back to the military.”

In a state press release, North Korean officials said that this sophisticated tracking of satellite orbits allowed them to launch their rocket at a precise time with no satellites overhead to avoid prying U.S. eyes. They did, however, deny allegations that they were using monkeys to gather intelligence data, suggesting stripograms are much more efficient at extracting information from ageing defence dinosaurs.