SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea defied international warnings and fired a long-range rocket today, the second launch under its new leader and a clear sign Pyongyang is pushing forward with its quest to develop the technology that could be used to deliver a nuclear warhead.
Pyongyang’s state media quickly claimed that the country had successfully put a satellite into orbit with its long-range Unha-3 rocket - the North’s stated goal of the launch. Officials at the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, said North Korea appeared to have put an object into space. South Korea and Japan said they couldn’t immediately confirm that.
The White House called the launch a “highly provocative act that threatens regional security.”
The launch was something of a surprise, as North Korea had indicated technical problems with the rocket and recently extended its launch window to Dec. 29.
A rocket expert said North Korea’s rocket appeared to have improved on an April launch, in which the rocket broke apart shortly after liftoff.
The United Nations, Washington, Seoul and others see the launch as a cover for a test of technology for missiles that could be used to strike the United States.
South Korean Defense Ministry spokesman Kim Minseok told a nationally televisednews conference that a South Korean Aegis-equipped destroyer detected the launch at 9:51 a.m. Korean time, and the first stage fell into the Yellow Sea about a minute later; the rocket then flew over a South Korean island near the border with North Korea a minute after that. The rocket was seen flying west of Okinawa at 9:58 a.m. and then disappeared from South Korean radars, Kim said.
William Lewis, a spokesman for the U.S. North American Aerospace Defense Command, which tracks such launches, had no immediate information about the reported launch.
Japan protested the launch and said one part of the rocket landed west of the Korean Peninsula and another part was expected to have landed east of the Philippines. South Korean President Lee Myungbak planned an emergency national-security council meeting today, and South Korean Foreign Minister Kim Sung-hwan warned that North Korea will face grave consequences.
Japan’s Foreign Ministry said Tokyo immediately requested consultations on the launch within the U.N. Security Council.
Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics said officials would likely have to wait a day or so to see whether the United States can track anything that might have been placed in orbit by North Korea.
Success would be defined as “something that completes at least one orbit of the earth,” he said. But “clearly this is much more successful than their last attempt. It’s at least as good as they’ve ever done. They’ve proved the basic design of it.”
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un took power after hisfather Kim Jong Il died on Dec. 17 last year, and the launch also comes less than a week before presidential elections in South Korea and about a month before President Barack Obama is inaugurated for his second term.
Rocket tests are seen as crucial to advancing North Korea’s nuclear weapons ambitions. North Korea is thought to have only a handful of rudimentary nuclear bombs. But Pyongyang is not yet believed capable of building warheads small enough to mount on a missile that could threaten the United States.
North Korea has spent decades trying to perfect a multistage, long-range rocket. Experts say that ballistic missiles and rockets in satellite launches share similar bodies, engines and other technology. This is the fifth attempt at a long-range launch since 1998, when Pyongyang sent a rocket hurtling over Japan. Previous launches of three-stage rockets weren’t considered successful.
North Korea under new leader Kim has pledged to bolster its nuclear arsenal unless Washington scraps what Pyongyang calls a hostile policy.
The launches today and in April came from a site on the west coast, in the village of Tongchang-ri, about 35 miles from the Chinese border city of Dandong, across the Yalu River from North Korea. The site is 45 miles from the North’s main Yongbyon nuclear complex, and is said to have better roads and facilities than previous sites and to allow a southerly flight path meant to keep the rocket from flying over other countries.
Information for this article was contributed by Peter Enav of The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 5 on 12/12/2012