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 criticized by Seoul and Tokyo.
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.
Seoul claims Kim received Russian technical assistance for that launch, in return for sending containers of weapons to Moscow for use in Ukraine.
But its attempt Monday to launch the “Malligyong-1-1” reconnaissance satellite ended in failure after it “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.
Japanese broadcaster NHK ran footage of what appeared to be a flaming projectile in the night sky, which then exploded into a fireball, saying it had filmed it from northeast China at the same time as the attempted launch.
Pyongyang had notified Japan earlier 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 analyzing it in detail in close cooperation,” the 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 destabilizing the security situation in the region and beyond.”
