North Korean leader Kim Jong Un vowed to continue building spy satellites, calling this an “essential task,” state-run media said Wednesday, in his first comments after the nuclear-armed country’s latest attempt at orbit ended in a ball of fire.
“Possessing military reconnaissance satellites helps our nation further strengthen self-defense deterrence and protect national sovereignty and security from potential threats ... due to U.S. military actions and various provocative acts,” the North’s official Korean Central News Agency quoted Kim as saying. “We are working on this as a prerequisite and essential task.”
Kim, who made the remarks during a visit to the Academy of Defense Sciences on Tuesday to mark the 60th anniversary of the agency's founding, also delivered a rare admission of failure, saying that the satellite-carrying rocket had self-destructed “due to an abnormality in the first-stage engine.”
The North Korean strongman also threatened Seoul with “overwhelming decisive action,” saying South Korea was “playing with fire” after it held military exercises following Tuesday’s launch.
Pyongyang confirmed the rocket's failure, with the vice general-director of the country's space agency blaming a newly developed liquid oxygen and petroleum engine.
The U.S. called the launch “a brazen violation” of United Nations Security Council resolutions, and was joined by Japan and South Korea in claiming it had “involved technologies that are directly related to the DPRK intercontinental ballistic missile program,” using the abbreviation of the North's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
But Kim claimed that Pyongyang’s moves were “critical” for its security and that his country had operated within the bounds of international decorum with the satellite attempt.
“The reason we are accelerating the acquisition of reconnaissance satellites rather than communication satellites, weather observation satellites or resource exploration satellites, which are practical and essential right now, is because acquiring them is a critical task directly related to the security of our nation,” he said.
The U.S. and South Korean militaries kicked off four days of regular live-fire air drills Monday involving more than 90 aircraft over waters off South Korea's flash point western coast, local media reported. Kim has cited these types of drills as a justification for bolstering his country’s military muscle.
In Tokyo, meanwhile, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi said Wednesday that Japan was aware of Kim’s remarks, reiterating the government’s view that North Korea is likely to “push forward” with more satellite launches in the future.
The North has failed in three of its four attempts to put a military reconnaissance satellite into orbit, a failure rate “that suggests a design under active development, some sort of systemic production/quality control weakness, or a combination of both,” researchers from the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank said in a report Tuesday.
They, however, added that such failures “are not unexpected” in the process of refining launch capabilities.
“If North Korea can persevere through the next two announced launches, absorb and implement the lessons of its failures, and refine the ... design, it is likely to produce a reliable (space launch vehicle) by this time next year,” they wrote.
Also Wednesday, South Korea's military said it had detected more than 200 balloons presumed to have been sent by Pyongyang across the inter-Korean border — the largest amount the North had flown into the South — the Yonhap news agency reported.
North Korea had warned earlier this week of a "tit-for-tat action" in response to anti-Pyongyang leaflets flown over the border by activists from the South.
The North Korean balloons that had been collected so far did not carry leaflets, but rather trash and other waste, including feces, local media reported, with authorities warning residents not to touch them and report them to nearby military or police.
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