This Article is From Feb 07, 2016

North Korean Rocket Launch Called 'Provocation'

North Korean Rocket Launch Called 'Provocation'

This picture taken from North Korean TV and released by South Korean news agency Yonhap on February 7, 2016 shows North Korea's rocket launch.

Highlights

  • North Korea launches long-range rocket
  • US, Japan, South Korea join United Nations in condemning launch
  • UN Security Council likely to hold emergency meeting on Sunday
SEOUL, South Korea:

Defying warnings of tougher sanctions from Washington, North Korea launched a rocket Sunday that Western experts believe is part of a program to develop intercontinental ballistic missile technologies.

The rocket blasted off from Tongchang-ri, the North's main satellite launch site near its northwestern border with China, a spokesman for the South Korean Defense Ministry said.

The three-stage rocket dropped its first stage about two minutes after takeoff and disappeared from radar four minutes later, as soon as it dropped its fairing, a nose cone used to protect its payload, Moon Sang-gyun, a spokesman for the South Korean Defense Ministry, said. When it disappeared from radar, the rocket was 240 miles above waters southwest of South Korea and 490 miles south of the launch site, he said.

"We are working together with our American ally to assess the launch and tell whether it was a success," he said.

President Park Geun-hye of South Korea called an emergency meeting of top national security advisers Sunday to address the launch, her office said. South Korea, the United States and Japan requested an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council.

In Washington, Secretary of State John Kerry called the launch a "major provocation, threatening not only the security of the Korean Peninsula, but that of the region and the United States as well." Susan E. Rice, the national security adviser, said it was "a flagrant violation" of Security Council resolutions.

North Korea had earlier notified the International Maritime Organization, the U.N. agency responsible for navigation safety, that it planned to launch a rocket between Monday and Feb. 25 to put a satellite into orbit.

The United States and its allies condemned North Korea's plan because they consider its satellite program to be a sort of cover for developing an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of delivering a nuclear bomb. Under a series of Security Council resolutions, North Korea is prohibited from developing nuclear weapons or ballistic-missile technologies.

Airbus Defense & Space and 38 North satellite imagery from February 4, 2016 shows the Sohae Satellite Launching Station in North Korea in this image released on February 5, 2016. (Reuters Photo)

Sung-Yoon Lee, a professor at Tufts University's Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, said North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, whose family has ruled the country for seven decades, wanted to show off advances in missile and nuclear programs before the Feb. 16 birthday of his late father, Kim Jong Il. Pyongyang timed some of its earlier nuclear and rocket tests to major national anniversaries.


North Korea insists its space program is peaceful, intended to put scientific satellites into orbit. It has attempted several launches since 1998, finally succeeding in putting a small satellite into space in 2012.

But the United States and its allies consider the program a pretext for developing technologies that can be used to build an intercontinental ballistic missile. The North's launch of a three-stage rocket Sunday, following a similar test in 2012, showed that the country was determined to acquire them despite sanctions imposed by the U.N. Security Council.

With the launch, North Korea was also defying its main ally, China. China has resisted the United States' move to place tough sanctions on the North since a Jan. 6 nuclear test, fearing that it might destabilize its neighbor. But it has also admonished North Korea not to conduct more nuclear and missiles tests and sent a senior envoy to Pyongyang.

In this image released by Japan's Kyodo News agency, an unidentified object is photographed in the sky from Dandong, China, near the North Korean border, Sunday, Feb. 7, 2016. (Minoru Iwasaki/Kyodo News via AP)

Hours after the missile launch, there was no official comment from the Chinese government. On Friday, China's foreign minister, Wang Yi, said in an article on the ministry's website that the U.N. Security Council "will definitely take further actions" but warned that the "vicious cycle" of sanctions was not the solution.

The North's latest move was sure to add impetus to the U.S. call for tougher sanctions and a more vigorous missile defense for its allies in the region.

After the North's nuclear test last month, South Korea grew more favorable toward the deployment of the U.S. Thaad ballistic missile defense system. China, South Korea's largest trade partner, has warned that it would consider the system's presence in the South a threat to its security.

Washington and its regional allies, South Korea and Japan, deployed Aegis destroyers and PAC-3 missile interceptors to protect the allies in case debris from the rocket hurtled toward them.

North Korea is widely believed to have at least several nuclear weapons. Although the North recently claimed an ability to strike the United States and its bases in the Asia-Pacific with nuclear warheads, it has never tested a missile that could deliver one beyond its home region.

But fear of the country's missile program has grown since December 2012, when it launched a three-stage Unha-3 rocket from Tongchang-ri and placed a Kwangmyongsong satellite into orbit.

North Korea has never flight-tested a ballistic missile version of its Unha-3 rocket. Western analysts are debating how close North Korea has come to acquiring the ability to produce a nuclear warhead that could survive re-entry from space, or one small enough to mount on a long-range missile.

The Unha-3 rocket, if modified to carry a 2,200-pound warhead instead of a satellite, could have enough range to reach Alaska and possibly Hawaii, David Wright, co-director of the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, wrote in his blog Friday.

Kim, the North Korean leader, recently called for his country to develop and launch "a variety of more working satellites" using "carrier rockets of bigger capacity." The country also renovated and expanded the gantry tower and other facilities in Tongchang-ri to accommodate more powerful rockets.

© 2016, The New York Times News Service
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