This is something you don’t see very often – a totalitarian regime admitting failure on state run television. Allahpundit has a theory on why they may have decided to openly admit failure like this.

The regime suspects it’s lost its monopoly of information inside the country due to radio broadcasts or other media from China and South Korea filtering in. They know the public — or a good chunk of it — is going to find out from outside media that the missile failed, which means they have two options. Either they can lie about it and lose credibility as North Koreans start to wonder about what other lies they’ve been told or they can tell the truth and preserve some of their credibility. They’re going to look weak either way as the news about the launch failure filters in; they might as well own it and try to maximize their retention of the people’s trust. The important point here, though, is that to force a confession like this the amount of foreign media now penetrating the country must be much bigger than we think. If that’s so, how long until the whole facade starts to crack? You can’t have a totalitarian state without total control.

Read the whole thing. Here’s the video.

Update: Linked by The Other McCain – thanks!