North Korea Seeks Political Gain From Rocket Launch
SEOUL, South Korea — Despite the failure of North Korea’s attempt to launch a satellite, Pyongyang’s adversaries voiced alarm on Monday over the extended range of the North’s latest rocket, while the United Nations tumbled into a disarray over how to respond to what President Obama called a “provocative act.”
Washington and Seoul said the North Korean rocket launched on Sunday failed to thrust a satellite into orbit. But on Monday, seeking to garner political gain from the test, the North Korean media praised Kim Jong-il’s leadership, insisting that a communications satellite was circling the Earth, broadcasting patriotic songs.
Officials and analysts in Seoul said the North’s rocket, identified by American officials as a Taepodong-2, flew at least 2,000 miles, doubling the range of an earlier rocket it tested in 1998 and boosting its potential to fire a long-range missile.
The impoverished country may be years away from building a truly intercontinental ballistic missile and tipping it with a nuclear warhead. But to governments grown increasingly concerned by the North’s military might, the launch was a sign that it was doggedly moving in that direction.
“North Korea’s reckless act of threatening regional and global security cannot have any justification,” said President Lee Myung-bak of South Korea in a radio speech on Monday.
Hours after North Korea’s missile test on Sunday, President Obama called for new United Nations sanctions and laid out a new approach to American nuclear disarmament policy — one intended to strengthen the United States and its allies in halting proliferation.
“In a strange turn of history, the threat of global nuclear war has gone down, but the risk of a nuclear attack has gone up,” Mr. Obama told a huge crowd in Prague’s central square. “Black market trade in nuclear secrets and nuclear materials abound. The technology to build a bomb has spread.”
He said the North’s testing of “a rocket that could be used for long-range missiles” illustrated “the need for action, not just this afternoon at the U.N. Security Council, but in our determination to prevent the spread of these weapons.”
“Rules must be binding,” he said. “Violations must be punished. Words must mean something.”
At the Security Council on Sunday, the United States and its main allies — Japan, France and Britain —pushed for a resolution denouncing the test as a violation of the 2006 sanctions, which demanded that North Korea suspend any activity related to the launching of ballistic missiles.
Diplomats said a main issue would be determining if the failed launch violated any resolutions.
“We think that what was launched is not the issue; the fact that there was a launch using ballistic missile technology is itself a clear violation,” said Susan E. Rice, the U.S. ambassador.
China left its position ambiguous, although diplomats said that at the initial meeting it stressed that the North Koreans had a right like any other country to launch satellites. “Our position is that all countries concerned should show restraint and refrain from taking actions that might lead to increased tensions,” Zhang Yesui, the Chinese ambassador, told reporters.
Igor N. Shcherbak, the Russian deputy envoy, said that his country did not think it was a violation of the resolutions banning ballistic missiles, but he added that Russia was still studying the matter.
Mexican Ambassador Claude Heller, the council’s president, said the council would reconvene on Monday.
In Tokyo, Foreign Minister Hirofumi Nakasone said: “We feel that a Security Council resolution is desirable, so we will keep trying for that.”
Although the debris of the North Korean rocket fell hundreds of kilometers short of where the North had said they would land in the Pacific, “the launch carries big political and military significance,” said Jeung Young-tai, an analyst at the Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul.
“No country will be naive enough to believe that it was a peaceful space program,” Mr. Jeung said.
“North Korea is on the threshold of becoming an intercontinental ballistic missile country.”
Peter Hayes, director of the Nautilus Institute, a San Francisco-based think tank, said the main motivation behind the launch was “to demonstrate the strength and vitality of Kim Jong Il’s leadership to the military and the population, and for the scientific sector to declare its fealty to Kim Jong Il’s leadership.”
Kim is expected to be re-affirmed as leader by his rubber-stamp parliament, which convenes on Thursday.
The people in the tightly isolated country have little access to news from the outside world, where the satellite launch was considered a failure.
When North Korea first flight-tested the Taepodong-2, in July 2006, it blew apart 40 seconds after take-off. The rocket is designed to fly at least 6,700 kilometers, or 4,200 miles, according the South Korean Defense Ministry.
This time, the official KCNA news agency asserted, “storms of hurrays shook the room” as the satellite entered orbit.
Choe Sang-hun reported from Seoul, South Korea,, Helene Cooper from Prague and David E. Sanger from London. Neil MacFarquhar contributed from the United Nations.
