The surprise location of North Korea’s latest missile test is making the US and China nervous

When North Korea launched its second intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) last week, of immediate concern was how far the missile traveled, and where it could have reached had it been sent on a lower trajectory (most of the US, as it turns out). But the launch location mattered, too.

In a first, the missile took off from the northern Chagang province. Geolocation wizards quickly found the precise coordinates.

That location will bother both the US and China. In a straight line on the map, from there it’s only about 50 km (31 miles) to the China border—Pyongyang is actually further away.

From Beijing’s perspective, it’s uncomfortably close. That’s no doubt fine with Pyongyang since it isn’t happy with China anyway. Earlier this year it criticized its neighbor for halting imports of North Korean coal. The location “appears to be a message for China,” Kim Yong-hyun, a professor at Seoul’s Dongguk University, told UPI.

From Washington’s point of view, the site’s proximity to China is obviously a concern. The location “is in mountainous terrain close to the border with China, so it is difficult for the US to hit it with a preemptive strike,” Park Hwee-rhak, a professor at Seoul’s Kookmin University, noted to Nikkei Asian Review.

For North Korea, the launch location helped it demonstrate that it can fire from places other than the usual spots. The rogue nation also threw observers for a loop by launching late at night (most launches this year have happened in the morning). Jeffrey Lewis, a nuclear nonproliferation expert at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, noted in the Daily Beast:

“They tested from a surprise location deep inside North Korea, near the Chinese border where it would be hard to strike. And they did it at night when satellites that rely on optical images are useless.”

North Korea is improving its ability to surprise enemies in other ways. In February (and again in May) it tested a mid-range missile that used solid fuel, an advancement that vastly improves mobility and makes the detection of an imminent launch more difficult. And this week the US military detected “highly unusual and unprecedented levels” of submarine activity, including tests done to prepare for missile launches—submarines, of course, have even more location flexibility.

All of this is done by North Korea not to prepare to preemptively attack the US and its allies—that would be suicidal for the Kim Jong-un regime—but to make anyone considering action against it more fearful of the consequences, and thus less likely to act. If you can’t be sure where launches might come from, or are leery about targeting an area near China, it’s hard to be confident about striking the regime—and about the price that might be paid for doing so.

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It’s hard to care about the Galaxy Note 8 now that we’ve seen this stunning Note 9 render

After months of leaks and rumors, Samsung is about to unveil the Galaxy Note 8 flagship smartphone later this month. There’s no question that the Note 8 is shaping up to be Samsung’s best ever smartphone, but for gadget fans, the excitement has certainly faded a bit. There will be absolutely no surprises left once Samsung executives finally take the stage in New York City on August 23rd, since practically everything there is to know has already leaked. We know what it looks like, we know just about all of the specs, and we know about most or even all of the Note 8’s key features. Perhaps the fact that the Galaxy Note 8 is already old news is part of the reason why a new Galaxy Note 9 concept posted on Tuesday is so intriguing.

Budding graphic designer Benjamin Geskin on Tuesday posted his vision of Samsung’s Galaxy Note 9, which is expected to be released next fall as a followup to this year’s Galaxy Note 8. Long story short, it’s a stunning vision of a phone that would be a natural iteration of the Note lineup. We often see crazy concepts that aren’t rooted at all in reality, but this Galaxy Note 9 mockup looks like a phone that could actually launch in 2018.

First, let’s look at the Galaxy Note 8’s design. Here’s a render that BGR exclusively posted last month:

Now, let’s check out Geskin’s Galaxy Note 9 concept:

Image Source: Benjamin Geskin, Twitter

In a nutshell, the designer took actual Galaxy Note 8 renders and stretched the phone’s Infinity Screen so that it reaches almost all the way to the edges of the phone. This is the same nearly bezel-free design we’re expecting to see on the iPhone 8.

Also like the iPhone 8, Geskin extended the display to the top of the phone on either side of the ear speaker and sensors. This would allow Samsung to move status bar icons off the main part of the display, just like the iPhone 8. It looks great in the render and it’s technically within the realm of possibility, but this type of display configuration would be much more difficult to implement on an Android phone than on iOS. Android’s status bar fills up quickly with notifications and other information, so Samsung would have to completely rework the status bar UI to push notifications to a second tier (which would defeat the purpose) or to limit the amount of info that can be displayed (which would be a big step backwards in terms of UX).

Geskin envisions the phone with a 6.4-inch display that has 4K resolution and an embedded fingerprint sensor. Again, 4K phones already exist today so there’s no technical barrier here for Samsung, and Qualcomm’s next-generation fingerprint sensors are expected to arrive in consumer products next year. In case you’ve forgotten, they’re designed to work through glass, displays, and even metal.

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