The NYT reports:

" . . . Military and private experts said Sunday after reviewing detailed tracking data that showed the missile and payload fell into the sea. Some said the failure undercut the North Korean campaign to come across as a fearsome adversary able hurl deadly warheads halfway around the globe . . . The United States Northern Command, based in Colorado Springs, issued a statement Sunday that portrayed the launching as a major failure. It based its information on a maze of federal radars, spy ships and satellites that monitor global missile firings."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/06/world/as...

Of course, it's a given that any news coming from the pentagon is just slightly more reliable than the BS that comes out of the DPRK, but I'd say the distinct lack of patriotic music coming from the heavens tends to back the report up.

I kind of had the feeling something like this might happen. The Dear Leader doesn't have a great track record with technical success. He seems to ascribe to the same faith-based approach to science that W & Co. did. I want it to work, therefore it will.

Experts quoted in the article say failure in the rocket business is almost just as useful as things going right. The early rockets Werner von Braun tested had a nasty habit of blowing on the pad and everywhere in between, as I recall. He certainly went on to great success bombing the daylights out of London and later showing the Russians we could land an ICBM right on top of the Kremlin (one small step for mankind, my ass!)Despite this natural crash and learn progression, I'm thinking the North Koreans won't have any more luck with future launches. They never learn and the ones who do learn are probably sent to re-education camps for all their trouble.

But who needs testing? The NYT says: "An influential 1998 report by Donald H. Rumsfeld before he became secretary of defense in the Bush administration argued that the North Korean rockets might be good enough to pose a threat to the United States even without flight testing."

Now, that's the kind of out of the box type of thinking the Dear Leader could use! Let's give Rummy a one way ticket to Pyongyang.