North Korea celebrated the "Day of the Sun" Saturday, marking the anniversary of the birth of the country's founder (and Kim Jong-un's grandfather), with a parade that included three missiles. One of those missiles was new, and appeared to be intercontinental in range, an expert told the NYT.
That celebration ended with the launch of a ballistic missile, from a submarine base on the East Coast, which exploded almost immediately.
NYT on why the launch might have failed:
As the North's skills grew, President Barack Obama ordered a surge in strikes against the nuclear launches, including through electronic-warfare techniques. It is unclear how successful the program has been, because it is almost impossible to tell whether any individual launch failed because of sabotage, faulty engineering or bad luck. But the North's launch-failure rate has been extraordinarily high since Mr. Obama first accelerated the program.
