The isolated communist country has decided to prolong the agony surrounding the planned launch of a long-range rocket. North Korea’s decision to carry out the test at all has drawn international condemnation, but now they seem to want to keep everyone on tenterhooks just a little longer, pushing the launch period back through Dec. 29. A spokesman for the hermit kingdom’s Committee of Space Technology said there was a “technical deficiency in the first-stage control engine module of the rocket.”
