North Korea unsuccessfully attempted to launch a rocket carrying a reconnaissance satellite on Monday night, Pyongyang’s state media reported, hours after a trilateral summit among China, Japan and South Korea that took place in Seoul.
North Korea’s latest attempt to put a spy satellite into orbit ended in a mid-air explosion, Pyongyang said late Monday, hours after its announcement of a planned launch was criticised by Seoul and Tokyo.
Japanese broadcaster NHK ran footage of what appeared to be a flaming projectile in the night sky, which then exploded into a fireball. NHK said the footage was taken from northeast China at the same time as the attempted launch.
The satellite “exploded in the air during the first flight stage and failed to launch,” the North’s National Aerospace Technology Administration said in a statement.
An “expert review concluded that the cause of the accident was the operational reliability of the newly developed liquid oxygen and oil engine,” the statement, carried by the official Korean Central news agency, added. Putting a spy satellite into orbit has long been a top priority for Kim Jong-un’s regime, and it claimed to have succeeded in November, after two failed attempts last year. North Korea claims the Malligyong-1 (meaning Telescope-1) satellite it put into orbit in November is successfully functioning, but Seoul’s intelligence agency has cast down on this claim.
Seoul claims Kim received Russian technical assistance for that launch, in return for sending containers of weapons to Moscow for use in Ukraine.
Pyongyang had notified Japan earlier on Monday that it was planning to put another satellite into orbit, prompting criticism from both Seoul and Tokyo, which urged Kim to call it off.
South Korea’s military said it had detected the launch but that the satellite “is presumed to have exploded in the air”.
“The South Korean and US intelligence authorities are analysing it in detail in close cooperation,” the South Korea’s joint chiefs of staff said.
Nuclear-armed North Korea is barred by multiple UN resolutions from tests using ballistic technology, and analysts say there is significant technological overlap between space launch capabilities and the development of ballistic missiles.
The launch “is a provocative act that clearly violates the UN security council resolution prohibiting the use of ballistic missile technology,” South Korea’s military said.
The US Indo-Pacific Command called the launch a “brazen violation of multiple unanimous UN security council resolutions”, and said in a statement that it “risks destabilising the security situation in the region and beyond”.
Japan briefly issued an alert warning residents of southern Okinawa prefecture to take cover in shelters on Monday, but it was lifted minutes later.
The attempted launch came just hours after Seoul, Beijing and Tokyo wrapped up their first trilateral summit since 2019.
South Korea’s president Yoon Suk Yeol said Monday that another satellite launch would “undermine regional and global peace and stability”.
Experts say that spy satellites could improve North Korea’s intelligence-gathering capabilities, particularly over South Korea, and provide crucial data in any military conflict.
