...
By John Feng
China Editor
0
Share
Newsweek is a Trust Project member
See more of our trusted coverage when you search.Prefer Newsweek on Googleto see more of our trusted coverage when you search.
North Korea said an accident prevented its second "military reconnaissance satellite" from reaching space on Monday, a setback for Kim Jong Un's regime, which appeared to be sending a political signal to its neighbors, including its only ally China.
An unnamed vice general director of North Korea's National Aerospace Technology Administration said the Malligyong-1-1 was on board a "new-type satellite carrier rocket" from the Tongchang-ri launch site in the country's northwest, according to the official Korean Central News Agency.
"The launch failed due to the air blast of the new-type satellite carrier rocket during the first-stage flight," the KCNA statement said, pointing to the unreliability of a "newly developed liquid oxygen [and] petroleum engine."
Read More on World
A news crew with Japanese broadcaster NHK, sent to Dandong in China's northeastern Liaoning province, on the North Korean border, captured the moment the rocket burst into flames in the night sky.
The abortive launch happened just hours after leaders from South Korea, Japan and China met in Seoul for a rare trilateral summit that concluded with a joint call for denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula.
Pyongyang counts on Beijing for economic support and political backing in international forums, a long-standing relationship that makes the timing of its decision even more unusual, and potentially embarrassing for the Chinese leadership.
After the trilateral summit, North Korea's Foreign Ministry lashed out at its neighbors, including China, calling denuclearization discussions "a grave political provocation and sovereignty violation that totally denies the DPRK's inviolable sovereignty," referring to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the country's official name.
"It is an insult never to be pardoned and a declaration of war against the DPRK that the ROK, in the most hostile relations with the DPRK, attempts to force the DPRK to violate its constitution in denial of its sovereign rights," it said, referring to the Republic of Korea in the south.
...
Amid signs of preparations over the weekend, South Korean defense officials told the Yonhap news agency that Russia had dispatched a large group of experts to the North to assist in what was to be a "high" standard launch event.
Seoul's intelligence previously concluded that President Vladimir Putin had pledged support to Pyongyang's space program when he hosted Kim at Russia's main spaceport last fall.
Andrew Yeo, a senior fellow and Korea chair at the Brookings Institution think tank, told Newsweek that North Korea likely timed Monday's event "to maximize the demonstration effect of the launch, and to distract from and undercut South Korea's achievement in reconvening the China-Japan-Korea summit."
Pyongyang wants to put at least three more satellites into orbit this year following its first success in November, repeatedly dismissing U.N. Security Council prohibitions on its development of ballistic missile technology.
"Of course, we shouldn't be surprised in North Korea's satellite launch in and of itself," said Yeo, who is also a politics professor at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. "But the Kim regime would have been fully aware when warning others about an impending satellite launch that it would coincide with the trilateral summit."
In the early hours of Monday, North Korea sent navigational warnings to Japan's coast guard for falling rocket debris in the Yellow Sea and the Philippine Sea, just east of the main Philippine island of Luzon, in a launch window lasting until June 3.
Less than 24 hours later, the Japanese government briefly issued a missile warning for its southwestern islands, urging residents to take shelter. It lifted the notice in light of North Korea's suspected failed satellite launch.
Its prime minister's office said on Tuesday that Pyongyang's rocket "disappeared over the Yellow Sea shortly after launch, and it is assumed no object was deployed into space."
The U.S. Indo-Pacific Command said the launch was "a brazen violation of multiple unanimous U.N. Security Council resolutions, raises tensions, and risks destabilizing the security situation in the region and beyond."
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning told a regular press briefing on Tuesday: "China hopes that all parties will insist on maintaining peace and stability on the peninsula and steadfastly promote the process of political settlement of the peninsula issue."
North Korea's successful satellite launch in November followed two failed liftoffs in May and August. It is expected to try again in the coming months.
View 0 Comments
Submit Correction
View Editorial & AI Guidelines