N. Korea launches satellite, in defiance of sanctions and pressure from U.S., allies
Video:
North Koreans danced in the streets of their capital Wednesday after the
regime of young leader Kim Jong Un successfully fired a long-range
rocket, defying international warnings.
Though the Unha-3 rocket did not carry a warhead, it relied on technology similar to that of a long-range missile, leading Washington, Seoul and Tokyo to describe the launch as the de facto test of an intercontinental ballistic missile that violated U.N. Security Council resolutions.
The incident illustrates what analysts described as the growing security risk posed by North Korea, as well as the increasing challenge facing Western countries as they search for ways to prevent such actions by the reclusive communist country.
Pyongyang’s family-run government is already cut off economically from almost every country but China. United Nations sanctions have made it more difficult for the North to launder its illicit money, import its luxury goods and acquire some weapons materials. But U.N. sanctions and bans have not stifled North Korean missile launches, nuclear tests or weapons trades.
Instead, the North does as it pleases, relying on domestic and illegally imported technology, in part because it has little fear about further international condemnation, some security analysts said.
North Korea says its satellite-launching program is about space research, not weapons technology, and is permissible under an international space treaty.
“The right to use outer space for peaceful purposes is universally recognized by international law, and it reflects the unanimous will of the international community,” North Korea’s state-run news agency quoted its Foreign Ministry spokesman as saying Wednesday.
“No matter what others say, we will continue to exercise our legitimate right to launch satellites and thus actively contribute to the economic construction and improvement of the standard of people’s living while conquering space.”
Some U.S. officials call Pyongyang their most vexing diplomatic challenge. Over the last 20 years, various U.S. governments have tried to pressure the North, engage with it, approach it one-on-one, and deal with it in groups that include China, Russia, South Korea and Japan.
President Obama’s approach to the North is often described as “strategic patience” — essentially, using sanctions while also pushing leader Kim Jong Eun to cease his bad behavior, with the promise of engagement if he does.
Critics of the Obama administration said Wednesday that North Korea’s launch should prompt the White House to rethink its strategy and give Pyongyang greater attention.
“The Obama administration’s approach continues to be unimaginative and moribund,” Rep. Edward R. Royce (R-Calif.), the incoming chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, said in a statement. “We can either take a different approach, or watch as the North Korean threat to the region and the U.S. grows.”
Royce called the U.S. policy toward North Korea a “long-running failure.”
Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the “provocative and destabilizing” launch amounted to “ ‘Groundhog Day’ once again” and violated U.N. Security Council resolutions. “It will only succeed in further isolating an already isolated North Korea, and the United States, our allies, and our partners will take appropriate steps to safeguard our national security,” he said in a statement.
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But until Wednesday, the spending had delivered little clear payoff. Four previous long-range rocket and missile tests — three for the purported purpose of placing a satellite into orbit — all failed. One broke up 40 seconds after launch. Two traveled more than a thousand miles. The previous rocket, in April, exploded about 90 seconds after takeoff and dropped into the sea.
Wednesday, everything went as North Korea planned. Its three-stage rocket sailed southward, slicing between China and South Korea, then soaring over Okinawa. One booster stage, as planned, dropped in the Yellow Sea. Another dropped in the East China Sea, near the Philippines. The third and final stage carried the payload — a satellite named Kwangmyongsong-3 — into orbit, where it was detected by international tracking systems.
North Korea’s state-run media — which have described several previous failures as successes — said the satellite entered orbit nine minutes and 27 seconds after liftoff.
Security experts cautioned that North Korea must still overcome several hurdles before it can directly threaten the United States with an intercontinental ballistic missile. It must miniaturize a nuclear weapon so it is small enough to mount on the rocket and hone technology that will allow the device to reenter the atmosphere from space.
In addition, “what [the latest test] doesn’t show is that they have any idea what the reliability is,” said David Wright, a missile and global security expert at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “And that’s an issue if you’re talking about war capability. If you have a nuclear warhead, you don’t want to put a warhead on a missile that you have no idea how far it will go.”
Following the April failure, the U.N. Security Council issued a statement condemning the blast and demanding that the North “not proceed with any further launches,” including those with mounted satellites. This time, the United Nations could issue a similar statement, but experts in Seoul and Washington warned that Beijing — Pyongyang’s key ally — will likely block the creation of meaningful, tighter sanctions, as it did in 2010 after two lethal North Korean attacks on the South.
A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said Wednesday that Beijing “regrets” that North Korea carried out the launch. He also called for the “relevant parties to keep calm, and work together to maintain peace and stability on the Korean peninsula.”
At a July meeting in Singapore between several U.S. experts and North Korean officials, first publicized by Foreign Policy, the North Koreans said they still wanted engagement with Washington. But they also felt they had leverage.
“They had a little bounce in their step,” said Joel Wit, a former U.S. nuclear negotiator who took part in the meetings. “They feel like they were making progress [with their weapons program] and had weathered whatever sanctions we can throw at them. I think the North Koreans, having gone through four years of strategic patience, are pretty fat and happy.”
Yoonjung Seo, in Seoul, and Liu Liu, in Beijing, contributed to this report.
Labels: Armaments, Crisis Politics, Cults, North Korea, Technology
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