SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea said Saturday that it would try to launch another long-range rocket later this month, as the country prepares to commemorate the death a year ago of its longtime ruler Kim Jong Il, and as his son, Kim Jong Un, works to bolster his credentials as a leader.
The launching, which North Korea said would take place between Dec. 10 and 22, is likely to prompt international condemnations and heighten tensions with Washington, D.C., and its allies. Critics consider North Korea’s launching of an Unha-3 rocket a cover for testing technology for intercontinental ballistic missiles that could eventually be used to carry nuclear weapons.
Sending a three-stage rocket into orbit would represent the North’s most significant step yet toward developing an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of hitting the U.S. mainland, although key hurdles would remain. North Korea’s satellite-carrying rocket depends on technology similar to that used in a long-range missile.
“A North Korean ‘satellite’ launch would be a highly provocative act,” State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland said in Washington. “Any North Korean launch using ballistic missile technology is in direct violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions.”
In an effort in April, a rocket blasted off from the launching site on the west coast near China only to disintegrate shortly afterward, failing in its goal of putting an Earth-observation satellite into orbit.
Saturday’s announcement came at a delicate time in the region. South Korea is gearing up for a Dec. 19 presidential election, and Japan plans parliamentary elections Dec. 16. In Washington, President Barack Obama will begin his second term in January.
“For Kim Jong Un, a successful rocket launching may be the best he can think of to show his achievements in his first year in power,” said Kim Yong-hyun, a professor of North Korean studies at Dongguk University in Seoul and a visiting scholar in international studies at Johns Hopkins University. Kim Jong Un took over after the death of his father on Dec. 17, 2011.
April’s launching led to the collapse of a deal under which Washington promised to ship humanitarian aid to North Korea in return for North Korea’s promise to suspend nuclear and missile tests, as well as uranium enrichment, and allow U.N. monitors back into its main nuclear complex.
The official Korean Central News Agency quoted an unidentified spokesman for the Korean Committee for Space Technology as saying that North Korea had “analyzed the mistakes” made in April and had improved the precision and reliability of the rocket and satellite. The space agency said the rocket would be mounted with a polar-orbiting Earth-observation satellite, and maintained its right to develop a peaceful space program.
“The question is whether they have really gone through the engineering corrections or are they rushing it for political reasons?” said Dan Pinkston, a Seoul-based security expert for the International Crisis Group. “That’s tough to say.”
The rocket is expected to take the same path as the abortive April launching, traveling between China and the Korean Peninsula. North Korea said Saturday that it would conduct the launching “transparently” and according to “international practices.”
Before its last two rocket launches, North Korea notified the International Civil Aviation Organization and the International Maritime Organization about its intentions to launch. International Maritime Organization spokesman Natasha Brown said that as of Friday the organization had not been notified by North Korea.
South Korea expressed “serious concern” about the North’s plan, calling it “a grave provocation” in defiance of international warnings and said it would set off a “strong response” from the international community. “The North must realize that its repeated provocations have only deepened its isolation,” the South Korean Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
According to North Korea’s state media, two of its satellite-launch attempts — in 1998 and 2009 — were successful, placing into orbit devices that can forecast weather and transmit revolutionary songs. But international tracking data indicate that both satellites dropped into the sea. The North also conducted a long-range missile test in 2006, which failed about 40 seconds after liftoff and was never described as a satellite-launch attempt.
North Korea has often used nuclear and missile threats during changes of power in the region as a way to try to force the new governments to engage in talks and possibly offer concessions. North Korea also has been accused of using military provocations to influence elections in the South.
This time, the announcement about the launching “could very well have to do primarily with domestic political considerations, that Kim Jong Un wants a demonstrable feat to boost his legitimacy, and his technicians have assured him they are ready,” said John Delury, a North Korea expert at Yonsei University in Seoul. “It doesn’t hurt that South Korea is in the middle of a string of aborted efforts at launching a satellite of their own — should Pyongyang succeed, it scores points in the ongoing inter-Korean rivalry, but also highlights what it sees as the hypocrisy of banning one Korea from doing what the other Korea does freely.”
South Korea has twice failed to launch a rocket with a satellite onboard — in 2009 and again in 2010. Its third attempt has been delayed twice in the past two months because of technical glitches. North Korea has been citing South Korea’s space program to help justify its own rocket development.
The Saturday announcement by North Korea did not come as a total surprise, because recent satellite images had shown a flurry of activity at the launch site, including the arrival, in trailers, of two stages of the rocket. Analysts in Seoul said the North was taking a risk with its launch because the move could anger China, its lone major benefactor, whose Communist Party last month promoted a new circle of leaders.
A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, asked Tuesday about a potential launch, said only that “it’s the common responsibility and shared interest of all parties concerned to maintain the peace and stability of the Korean Peninsula.”
Under U.N. Security Council resolutions, North Korea is prohibited from conducting any test or launch using “ballistic missile technology.” North Korea also has conducted two nuclear tests, in 2006 and 2009.
The North’s announcement came a day after Kim Jong Un met a delegation sent by China’s new leader, Xi Jinping. South Korean news media had speculated that one of the missions of the Chinese delegation might have been to try to persuade Pyongyang to refrain from launching a rocket again. While China remains the North’s only real ally, North Korea has ignored some of its requests in the past to cease provocations.
Kim, the analyst, said it would be hard to predict how the planned rocket launching, whether successful, would affect the election in South Korea, which pits Park Geun-hye, the conservative candidate from the governing Saenuri Party, against Moon Jae-in, the liberal opposition candidate.
The North’s provocation may be a disadvantage for Park, who has never served in the military and is trying to become the first female president of South Korea, but at the same time could help rally conservative voters around the conservative party candidate. Moon could try to use the provocations to rally liberal voters who oppose the conservatives’ hard line and prefer a more aggressive engagement with North Korea as the best means of taming its behavior.
Information for this article was contributed by Choe Sang-Hun of The New York Times; by Chico Harlan of The Washington Post; and by Foster Klug, Jean H. Lee, Sam Kim, Jill Lawless, Thomas Strong and Elaine Kurtenbach of The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 12/02/2012