[Aktungbby]

TODAY's corrective WSJ update-posted in full for those w/o WSJ account:

The U.S. believes that North Korea produces its own rocket engines rather than relying on foreign imports, a U.S. intelligence official said Tuesday.
The comments from the intelligence community come as experts have questioned if Kim Jong Un’s regime obtained Soviet-designed rocket engines through illicit channels in Ukraine or Russia.
A report by the International Institute for Strategic Studies released Monday said the liquid-propellant rocket engines North Korea has used in recent tests resemble those originating from Soviet designs and theorized that North Korea had somehow illicitly purchased engines smuggled out of Russia or Ukraine.
“We have intelligence to suggest that North Korea is not reliant on imports of engines,” a U.S. intelligence official said Tuesday in response to the report. “Instead, we judge they have the ability to produce the engines themselves.”
The report’s author, Michael Elleman, said Tuesday that he remains skeptical that North Korea can produce engines of such sophistication on its own. Mr. Elleman said observations he made of the launch and trajectory of the missiles suggest they were of Soviet design. He inferred the missiles were imported to North Korea because Pyongyang lacked the expertise to build them unaided.
“One does not start by creating a new, powerful, efficient and reliable engine from thin air,” he said.
Mr. Elleman, a former missile engineer, pointed out that the U.S. has faced challenges refurbishing old Russian engines for space launches and that U.S. engineers cannot manufacture a Russian engine the U.S. continues to rely upon, despite two decades of work beside Russian engineers.
The intelligence official declined to comment further, but officials said the U.S. has been tracking North Korea’s program for a long time.
“The intelligence community has done remarkable work in understanding Kim Jong Un, watching his ballistic missile program develop, watching his nuclear weapons program continue to exceed,” CIA Director Mike Pompeo said Sunday on CBS ’s “Face the Nation.” “The intelligence there is actually very good.”
The reports come as a standoff between the Trump administration and North Korea appears to have dissipated, at least for now. North Korea’s leader, Mr. Kim, on Tuesday backed off a threat to strike Guam and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson later reiterated that the U.S. is open to talks with Pyongyang, provided it takes certain steps to de-escalate.
“We continue to be interested in finding a way to get to dialogue, but that’s up to him,” Mr. Tillerson told reporters at the State Department, referring to Mr. Kim.

How reassuring that Russian copies of rockets, with Chinese electronics, are no longer dependent on Ukrainian copied engines...I'll surely sleep the sleep of the saved! ...and thank WSJ's columnist, Felicia Schwartz, for keeping me posted!