A defiant North Korea launches long-range rocket
TOKYO - In defiance of international warnings, North Korea launched a long-range rocket Sunday morning, a move widely seen as another step toward mastering the technology for making a missile capable of striking the mainland United States.
Both the South Korean defense minister and the Pentagon said that the rocket appeared to have successfully reached space.
The rocket launch was expected - Pyongyang had given warnings to maritime and airspace authorities, and analysts had detected movement at its launch site - but coming just a month after a nuclear test, it nevertheless showed Kim Jong Un's continued willingness to defy the international community.
The United States, Japan and South Korea immediately condemned the launch, and the United Nations Security Council called an emergency meeting for later Sunday to discuss North Korea's latest provocation.
South Korea's defense ministry said a rocket was launched from North Korea's west coast, near the border with China, at 9:31 Seoul time - just half an hour before the final Republican presidential debate started. Donald Trump and Marco Rubio both urged China to get tough on North Korea.
The rocket was projected to fly down South Korea's west coast, with the first stage expected to splash down near the southern island of Jeju, while the second stage was forecast to go over the southern Japanese islands of Okinawa and in the sea east of the Philippines. Television stations in Japan and South Korea showed footage of the rocket flying through the sky.
The rocket went missing from the South Korean military radar in the sea near Jeju Island at 9:36 a.m., said defense ministry spokesman Moon Sang-gyun, but the Japanese government said it passed over the southern islands of Okinawa at about 9:41 a.m. There were no reports of any debris falling on land.
"We can definitely say that this was an attempted space launch," said Melissa Hanham, a nuclear expert at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies.
North Korea previously fired a Kwangmyongsong-3 ("lode star") on an Unha-3 ("galaxy") missile into orbit in December 2012, the month that North Korea marked the first anniversary of the death of Kim Jong Il, the current leader's father. Kim's regime had said it would launch the same kind of satellite into orbit between Feb. 7 and 14, and the launch came just a few hours after that window began. Sunday's launch also coincides with another key date: North Korea's celebration of Kim Jong Il's birthday Feb. 16.
North Korea has said the launches were of satellites intended for scientific purposes, but analysts and many governments see this as a disguised missile test. North Korea has successfully launched short- and medium-range missiles but has been working to develop a reliable long-range intercontinental ballistic missile. Every test that it conducts reveals problems or successes and helps it get closer to this goal.
"This kind of rocket is designed as a space launch vehicle. Before we can consider it an inter-continental ballistic missile, there are a number of modifications that have to be made," Hanham said. A space rocket goes into the atmosphere to launch a satellite into orbit, but an intercontinental ballistic missile needs to return to Earth from the atmosphere to deliver a warhead.
Jim Walsh, of the security studies program at MIT, said that even though most of North Korea's rocket and missile tests had been failures and Pyongyang was still using liquid-launched rockets, a technology now considered "archaic" everywhere else, there was still reason for concern.
"The more tests they do, the more they learn, and they're beavering away trying to improve their technology," he said. "This doesn't mean that they're not making progress. And it also means that at some level, they're still able to evade sanctions."
Nevertheless, the international community immediately resumed calls for North Korea to face strong punishment through more sanctions for its actions.
Susan Rice, President Obama's national security adviser, said that the launch using ballistic missile technology, following so closely after North Korea's fourth nuclear test, "represents yet another destabilizing and provocative action and is a flagrant violation of multiple United Nations Security Council resolutions."
"North Korea's missile and nuclear weapons programs represent serious threats to our interests - including the security of some of our closest allies - and undermine peace and security in the broader region," she said in a statement.
Rice also reiterated calls - mainly directed at China, North Korea's closest ally and a veto-wielding permanent member of the Security Council - for the international community to "stand together and demonstrate to North Korea that its reckless actions must have serious consequences."
In Seoul and in Tokyo, both South Korean President Park Geun-hye and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe called emergency meetings of their national security councils, during which both said they could "not accept" such a provocation.
"North Korea's long-range missile is a grave threat not only to the North East Asian region but the entire world. North Korea is refusing to enter any dialogue and is looking to provocations in order to sustain its regime," Park said, according to local reports. "The U.N. Security Council must take strong sanctions against North Korea's provocation as the missile launch is a clear violation of UNSC resolutions."
Going into the meeting, Abe told reporters the launched a "clear violation" of the U.N. Security Council's resolutions. "We will continue to cooperate with the international community to firmly handle this," he said.
A series of U.N. resolutions has prohibited North Korea from carrying out nuclear or ballistic missile tests, but Kim's regime has shown little regard for these orders.
Last month, it conducted its fourth nuclear test, and its first in almost three years, although analysts dismissed North Korea's claims that the device was a hydrogen bomb. The test was immediately met with calls for harsh sanctions against North Korea, and moves are afoot both in the United States Congress and at the United Nations to punish Pyongyang.
North Korea has also recently claimed to have mastered launching a missile from a submarine, although analysts have said the claims also appear to have been exaggerated.
Still, with the repeated tests and launches, Kim has shown that he is intent on proceeding with his "byungjin" policy of developing the nuclear program and the economy simultaneously. Likewise, in the face of repeated calls to return to multilateral denuclearization talks, Kim has made clear that he wants North Korea to be seen as a nuclear state and that his weapons program is not up for negotiation.
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