North Korea: Unclear

Today I was skimming the front page of The Wall Street Journal and I read this blurb:

Gates said there is evidence North Korea has begun work on another long-range missile, but a launch anytime soon remains unclear.

I realized the word 'unclear' strongly brought to mind the word 'nuclear', for obvious reasons. Then I started wondering if that word choice might be a deliberative one. I did a Google News search for the words "North Korea" and "unclear", then compared the results count to many synonyms for unclear that I found on an online thesaurus:

1,610 for north-korea unclear

13 for ambiguous,

80 for dim

26 for elusive

6 for fuzzy

4 for hazy

2 for imprecise

110 for shadowy

531 for uncertain

481 for unsettled

11 for unsure

47 for vague

I also threw in another word that I thought could likely be used instead.

342 for unknown

I don't suppose this answers the question on whether the word choice is deliberative or not (it could be a subconscious choice), but I don't think it is mere coincidence.