SEOUL // For North Korea’s propaganda machine, yesterday’s long-range rocket launch carved a glorious trail of “fascinating vapour” through the clear blue sky.
For South Korea’s president, and other world leaders, it was a banned test of dangerous ballistic missile technology and yet another “intolerable provocation”.
The rocket was launched from North Korea’s west coast two hours after an eight-day launch window opened yesterday, its path tracked separately by the United States, Japan and South Korea. No damage from debris was reported.
The North, which calls its launches part of a peaceful space programme, said it had successfully put a new Earth observation satellite, the Kwangmyongsong 4, or Shining Star 4, into orbit less than 10 minutes after lift-off. It vowed more launches.
A US official said it would take days to assess whether the launch was a success.
The launch follows North Korea’s widely disputed claim last month to have tested a hydrogen bomb. Washington and its allies will consider the rocket launch a further provocation and push for more tough sanctions.
A UN Security Council meeting was scheduled for yesterday in New York to discuss the issue.
The rocket and nuclear tests are seen as crucial steps towards the North’s ultimate goal of a nuclear armed missile that could hit the US mainland.
North Korea, under leader Kim Jong-un, has pledged to bolster its nuclear arsenal unless Washington scraps what Pyongyang calls a hostile policy meant to collapse the hermit state’s government. Diplomats were also pushing to tighten UN sanctions because of the North’s January 6 nuclear test.
In a development that will worry both Pyongyang and Beijing, a South Korean defence ministry official, Yoo Jeh-seung, said that Seoul and Washington have agreed to begin talks on a possible deployment of the Thaad missile defence system in the South.
The North has long decried the nearly 30,000 US troops stationed in the South, and Beijing would see a South Korean deployment of Thaad, one of the world’s most advanced missile defence systems, as a threat to its interests in the region.
The North’s national aerospace development administration praised “the fascinating vapour of Juche satellite trailing in the clear and blue sky in spring of February on the threshold of the Day of the Shining Star”.
Juche is a North Korean philosophy focusing on self-reliance; the Day of the Shining Star refers to the February 16 birthday of former dictator Kim Jong- il.
South Korean defence ministry spokesman Moon Sang- gyun said a South Korean Aegis-equipped destroyer detected the launch at 9.31am.
The rocket’s first stage fell off North Korea’s west coast at 9.32am, and the rocket disappeared from South Korean radars at 9.36am off the south-west coast. There was no reported damage in South Korea.
The US strategic command said that it detected and tracked a missile launched on a southern trajectory, but that it did not pose a threat to the United States or its allies.
Japanese broadcaster NHK showed video of an object in the skies from the southern Japanese island of Okinawa that was believed to be the rocket. South Korea’s Yonhap news agency later backed away, without elaborating, from a report that said the rocket might have failed.
The global condemnation began almost immediately.
The UN Security Council condemned the rocket launch and vowed to take “significant measures” in response to Pyongyang’s violations of UN resolutions.
South Korean president Park Geun-hye called the launch an “intolerable provocation”. She said the North’s efforts to advance its missile capabilities were “all about maintaining the regime” in Pyongyang and criticised the North’s leadership for ignoring the hardships of ordinary North Koreans.
Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe vowed to “take action to totally protect the safety and well-being of our people”.
US national security adviser Susan Rice called the North’s missile and nuclear weapons programmes a “serious threats to our interests – including the security of some of our closest allies”.
China, the North’s only major ally and its protector in the UN Security Council where Beijing wields veto power, expressed “regret that, disregarding the opposition from the international community, the [North] side obstinately insisted in carrying out a launch by using ballistic missile technologies.”
South Korean opposition legislator Shin Kyung-min, who attended a closed-door briefing by the national intelligence service following the launch, said the body believed that the rocket’s payload satellite was about twice as heavy as the 100-kilogram satellite it launched in 2012.
The NIS estimated that if the rocket would have been used as a missile, it would have had a range of about 5,500 kilometres, Mr Shin said.
* Associated Press