SEOUL - North Korea is to carry out its second
rocket launch of 2012 as its youthful leader Kim Jong-un flexes his
muscles a year after his father's death, in a move that will likely
heighten diplomatic tensions and draw criticism from Washington.
North Korea's state news agency announced the decision to launch
another space satellite on Saturday, just a day after Kim met a senior
delegation from China's Communist Party in the North Korean capital of
Pyongyang.
China, under new leadership, is North
Korea's only major political backer and has continually urged peace on
the Korean peninsula, where the North and South remain technically at
war after an armistice, rather than a peace treaty, ended the 1950-53
conflict.
No comment on the planned launch was immediately available from Beijing's foreign ministry.
Seoul's foreign ministry said in a statement that the move was a "grave
provocation". Japan's Kyodo news agency said Prime Minister Yoshihiko
Noda had ordered ministries to be on alert for the launch.
"North Korea wants to tell China that it is an independent state by
staging the rocket launch and it wants to see if the United States will
drop its hostile policies," said Chang Yong-seok, a senior researcher at
the Institute for Peace Affairs at Seoul National University.
North Korea is banned from conducting missile or nuclear-related
activities under United Nations resolutions imposed after Pyongyang
carried out nuclear tests, although it says its rockets are used to put
satellites into orbit for peaceful purposes.
Washington and Seoul believe the isolated, impoverished state is testing
long-range missile technology with the aim of developing an
intercontinental ballistic missile capable of carrying a nuclear
warhead.
Pyongyang's threats are aimed, in part, at winning concessions and aid from Washington, analysts say.
POLITICS AND ANNIVERSARIES
The failed April rocket launch took place to celebrate the 100th
anniversary of the birth of North Korean founder Kim Il Sung and the
latest test will take place close to the Dec. 17 date of the death of
former leader Kim Jong-il.
It will also come as
South Korea gears up for a Dec. 19 presidential election in a vote that
pits a supporter of closer engagement with Pyongyang against the
daughter of South Korean dictator Park Chung-hee.
The April test was condemned by the United Nations, although taking
action against the North is hard as China refuses to endorse further
sanctions against Pyongyang.
North Korea is already one of the most heavily sanctioned states on earth thanks to its nuclear programme.
Pyongyang has few tools to pressure the outside world to take it
seriously due to its diplomatic isolation and its puny economy.
The state that Kim Jong-un inherited last December after the death of
his father boasts a 1.2 million-strong military, but its population of
23 million, many malnourished, supports an economy worth just $40
billion annually in purchasing power parity terms, according to the U.S.
Central Intelligence Agency.
"The North's
calculation may be that they have little to lose by going ahead with it
at this point," said Baek Seung-joo of the Korea Institute for Defense
Analyses in Seoul.
Baek said the test planned
for December would likely be no more successful in launching a satellite
than the April one that crashed into the sea between China and North
Korea after flying just 120 km.
"Kim Jong-un may
be taking a big gamble trying to come back from the humiliating failure
in April and in the process trying to raise the morale for the
military," Baek said.
North Korea's space agency
said on Saturday that it had worked on "improving the reliability and
precision of the satellite and carrier rocket" since April's launch. — Reuters
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