Seoul:
North Korea says it has fired a “space launch vehicle,” the South’s military said Wednesday morning.
North Korea on Tuesday confirmed it planned to launch what it called “military reconnaissance satellite No. 1” before June 11, after notifying Japan of its plans a day earlier.
Pyongyang fired “what it says is a space launch vehicle” to the south, Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said, without giving further details.
Soon after, a text alert said, “Citizens, please prepare for evacuation and have children and the elderly evacuate first,” as an air raid siren sounded in downtown Seoul.
Minutes later, Seoul’s interior ministry said the warning had been issued “incorrectly”.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff said the missile flew over the Yellow Sea and did not impact the Seoul metropolitan area, Yonhap reported.
North Korea said on Tuesday its new spy satellite would be “indispensable to detect, monitor and deal with the dangerous military actions of the US and its proxies in advance in real time.”
A top North Korean official criticized joint US-South Korea military exercises, including ongoing large-scale live fire exercises, saying Pyongyang “felt a need to expand reconnaissance and intelligence assets and improve various defensive and offensive weapons” state media reported.
Pyongyang, which does not normally issue advanced warnings for missile launches, has been known to inform international agencies of supposedly peaceful satellite launch plans.
It told Japan on Monday it would launch a missile between May 31 and June 11.
Tokyo and Seoul strongly criticized the proposed launch, saying it would violate UN sanctions, which ban Pyongyang from testing ballistic missile technology.
Because long-range missiles and space launchers share the same technology, analysts say developing the ability to launch a satellite into orbit would give Pyongyang cover for testing banned intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).
In 2012 and 2016, Pyongyang tested ballistic missiles it called satellite launches. Both flew over the southern Okinawa region of Japan.
Japan briefly activated its missile warning system for the Okinawa region early Wednesday, lifting it after about 30 minutes.
– ‘Price and Pain’ –
Since diplomacy collapsed in 2019, North Korea has doubled down on military development by conducting a series of banned weapons tests, including testing multiple ICBMs.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un last year declared his country an “irreversible” nuclear power and called for an “exponential” increase in weapons production, including tactical nuclear weapons.
Kim this month inspected the country’s first military spy satellite as it was prepared for launch, green-lighting his “future plan of action.”
By 2021, Kim had identified the development of such satellites as an important defense project for the North Korean military.
South Korea’s foreign ministry earlier this week condemned the launch plan, saying the “so-called ‘satellite launch’ is a serious violation of UN Security Council resolutions banning all launches using ballistic missile technology”.
“If North Korea eventually goes through with the launch, it will have to bear the price and pain it deserves.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by DailyExpertNews staff and is being published from a syndicated feed.)