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N Korea launches long-range rocket despite warnings

aljazeeara.com
racheta

North Korea says rocket carries an earth observation satellite but critics say it is a disguised ballistic missile test.

North Korea has launched a long-range rocket, violating UN resolutions and doubling down against an international community already determined to punish Pyongyang for a nuclear test last month.

State media said on Sunday the launch to put a satellite into space was a "complete success" and vowed to continue launching satellites in the future.

Pyongyang labelled the launch part of a purely scientific space programme, but most of the world viewed it as a disguised ballistic missile test.

The rocket took off at around 9:00am Pyongyang time (00:30 GMT), according to the South Korean defence ministry.

Its pre-orbital flight arc was planned to traverse the Yellow Sea and further south to the Philippine Sea, with both South Korea and Japan threatening to shoot it down if it encroached on their territory.


Multiple UN Security Council resolutions proscribe North Korea's development of its ballistic missile programme.

Despite Pyongyang's insistence on a peaceful space mission, its rockets are considered dual-use technology with both civil and military applications.

The UN Security Council will hold an emergency meeting later on Sunday in New York over the launch, following a request by South Korea, Japan and the US.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called the launch "deeply deplorable" and urged North Korea to "halt its provocative actions".

'Flagrant violation'

The United States said it would work with the UN Security Council on "significant measures" to hold North Korea to account for the launch, US Secretary of State John Kerry said.

Calling the launch "a flagrant violation" of UN resolutions on the country's use of ballistic missile technology, Kerry in a statement reaffirmed the "ironclad" US defence commitments to Japan and South Korea and called the launch a "destabilising and unacceptable challenge" to peace and security.

Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said the launch was "a clear violation" of UN Security Council resolutions.

"We will cooperate with the international community and stand firm to take appropriate measures," Abe said. "We will also give our best efforts to protect our people's security and safety."

North Korea launched the rocket in defiance of UN sanctions barring it from using ballistic missile technology [Reuters]
A flying object soared into the air above North Korean territory as seen from the Chinese border city of Dandong [Reuters]

Al Jazeera's Adrian Brown, reporting from Beijing, said North Korea had not only defied the US and many other western countries.

"It has also defied China, which is its only ally," Brown said.

Following the launch, China called on all sides to act cautiously and refrain from taking steps that might further raise tensions on the Korean peninsula.

"China expresses regret that North Korea, in spite of the pervasive opposition of the international community, insisted on using ballistic missile technology to carry out a launch," said foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying in a statement posted on the ministry's website.

Robert Kelly, professor of political science and diplomacy at Pusan National University in Seoul, said the North's main goal behind the rocket tests was "regime security".

"North Korea's government is truly afraid that the US would remove the regime, the way it has done in other countries. And Pyongyang doesn't have a lot of other currency to force the world's hand," Kelly told Al Jazeera.

'Additional sanctions'

With the international community still struggling to find a united response to the North's January 6 nuclear test, the rocket launch - while provocative - is unlikely to substantially up the punitive ante.

"North Korea likely calculates that a launch so soon after the nuclear test will probably only incrementally affect the UN sanctions arising from that test," said Alison Evans a senior analyst at IHS Jane's.

North Korea's chief diplomatic ally, China, has been resisting the US push for tougher sanctions against Pyongyang.

While infuriated by North Korea's refusal to curb its nuclear ambitions, China's overriding concern is avoiding a collapse of the regime in Pyongyang and the possibility of a US-allied unified Korea on its border.

North Korea last launched a long-range rocket in December 2012, placing an earth observation satellite in orbit.

Western intelligence experts said the satellite had never functioned properly, and argued that this proved the mission's scientific veneer was a sham.

Despite Pyongyang's bellicose claims to the contrary, the North is still seen as being years away from developing a credible inter-continental ballistic missile (ICBM).

ICBM 'threat'

Orbital rocket launches, experts say, are relatively straightforward compared to the challenge of mastering the re-entry technology required to deliver a payload as far away as the United States.

"An ICBM warhead, unlike a satellite, needs to come down as well as go up," said aerospace engineer John Schilling, who has closely followed the North's missile programme.

"North Korea has never demonstrated the ability to build a reentry vehicle that can survive at even half the speed an ICBM would require," Schilling said.

"If and when they do, what is presently a theoretical threat will become very real and alarming," he added.

It is also unclear how far North Korea has progressed in miniaturising warheads to fit on the tip of an eventual ICBM.

The North said last month's nuclear test was of a miniaturised hydrogen bomb. Most experts dispute the claim, saying the yield was far to low for a full-fledged H-bomb.

Source: Al Jazeera and agencies

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