Alarm in Japan and South Korea by a North Korean space rocket

The attempt to put a North Korean satellite into orbit put the Japanese island of Okinawa and the South Korean capital Seoul on alert early Wednesday morning

The flight ended abruptly at sea, the South Korean military has reported.

“At 6:29 a.m. (2129 GMT) our military detected the alleged launch of a North Korean space rocket from the vicinity of Tongchang-ri. The projectile flew over the waters west of Baekryungdo Island and landed in waters 200 kilometers to the south. west of Eocheongdo Island after an abnormal flight,” Lee Kwangsub, South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff official, explained at a press conference.

The remains of the rocket were found by the South Korean military, Pyongyang confirmed that the launch failed. This Wednesday was the sixth launch of a satellite by North Korea, which has apparently only managed to get two devices into orbit (in 2012 and 2016), neither of which have ever shown signs of being operational. Both Japan and South Korea apologized to their citizens for the false alarm.

Seoul, Tokyo and Washington condemn the launch

For their part, the authorities in Seoul, Tokyo and Washington harshly condemned the launch, considering that it is actually a a covert test to test ballistic missile technologies, something that is punished by the UN resolutions that have weighed on Pyongyang since 2006.

The South Korean National Security Council (NSC) said the launch “has been a serious violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions and a serious provocation that threatens peace and security on the Korean peninsula and in the international community.” .

“This launch, whether of a satellite or a missile, violates UN resolutions and therefore we cannot accept it,” Japanese Defense Minister Yasukazu Hamada said in statements to local media.

For his part, one of the spokesmen for the US National Security Council, Adam Hodge, said in a statement that “this alleged space launch involved technologies directly related to the ICBM program of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (official name of North Korea)”.

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