N. Korea vows to launch spy satellite soon following failure
The younger sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has vowed to launch a military reconnaissance satellite soon, the country’s state media reported Thursday, a day after its first attempt at doing so failed.
This photo taken on May 31, 2023, by the Korean Central News Agency shows a “military reconnaissance satellite” being launched at the Sohae Satellite Launching Ground in Tongchang-ri, North Korea.
Kim Yo Jong, a senior official of the Workers’ Party of Korea, said in a statement carried by the Korean Central News Agency, “It is certain” that the satellite “will be correctly put on space orbit in the near future and start its mission.”
The statement came as the United States and regional allies Japan and South Korea remained on alert for another attempt by North Korea to launch its first spy satellite.
KCNA also released two photos of what it said was a rocket carrying the satellite lifting off from a launch pad.
South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency said the rare photos of the North’s failed launch were published in an apparent bid to stress it was not a test of a weapons system.
The launch site in the images was presumed to be a new coastal site located around 3 kilometers from the launch pad at the Sohae Satellite Launching Ground on the west coast, the Yonhap report said.
Kim Yo Jong
U.S.-based website 38 North, which monitors North Korea, ran a similar assessment.
North Korea said Wednesday its satellite launch failed due to the “low reliability and stability of the new-type engine system.” The South Korean military has said the projectile was a long-range ballistic missile.
An official from the South Korean military said Thursday that part of the projectile fired by the North fell into the Yellow Sea and sunk to a depth of 75 meters.
The Navy is continuing its operation to salvage the part, which is about 15-meter-long with a diameter of about 2-3 meters, the official said.
South Korea’s Defense Minister Lee Jong Sup said during a parliamentary session held on the day that the part is presumed to be the rocket’s second stage.
The United States and its regional allies immediately condemned Pyongyang’s launch for using ballistic missile technology in violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions.
Kim Yo Jong, vice department director of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea, said the country has a “sovereign right” to conduct a satellite launch, and criticism of such action violates the “DPRK’s right to use space.”
DPRK is the acronym for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, North Korea’s formal name.
Kim also said it was a “self-contradiction” to criticize North Korea’s action when the United States and other countries “have already launched thousands of satellites.”
If countries continue to infringe upon the sovereign right of North Korea, she said, “We will never remain an onlooker to them.”
