Re: North Korea warns U.S. about pre-emptive strike 'if necessary'
Facts don't confirm that their rocket technology is "up to date". The two stages of the rocket launched in 2012 were examined by Korean missile experts. They reported that the components of the rocket were unreliable and inefficient, the rocket design being based on older technologies from the 1960s and 70s, whereas the rocket engine was almost identical to the Iranian one (don't ask me where they got the Iranian rocket engine from).
I said more or less
. BTW nothing wrong with the 60' 70' rocket technology. E.g. the good old russian kerosene/nitric acid or DMH/NTO rocket engines are still the most reliable and cheapest engines "on the market" (...but a bit fussy to handle the fuel). The keyword here is "based" e.g. the Scud-C and Scud-D are both based on the ancient Scud-A (what is a direct descendant of the V2) but the newer C and D models are very different in almost every possible ways. So underestimating NK could be a serious mistake. BTW nobody will directly attack NK as it's still a Chinese outpost. Same situation as Ukraine.