<Anchor>

North Korea quickly admitted failure two and a half hours after the launch. He said there was a problem with the new rocket and that he would launch a second launch as soon as possible.

He is a journalist specializing in North Korea.

<Reporter>

North Korea's acknowledgment of failure came two and a half hours after the launch of the space launch vehicle.

North Korea said through the Korean Central News Agency that the accident occurred when it launched a new Cheollima-2 carrier rocket with a military reconnaissance satellite called the Manli-2.

North Korea once admitted failure to launch a long-range rocket in April 2 after only four hours.



Today (the 1st) was even sooner than that.

It seems that the company has announced plans to launch satellites externally and has calmly admitted the fact when all the neighboring countries are aware of the failure.

However, neither the Nodong Sinmun nor the Korean Central Television, which are available to North Koreans, report this fact.

North Korea said the reason for the failure was that the second stage of the rocket could not be started after the separation of the first stage propellant.

It seems to mean that the ignition of the second stage of the rocket was not carried out in time, and the second and third stages, as well as the onboard satellites, all crashed.

North Korea attributed the accident to the lack of reliability and stability of the new rocket and the unstable characteristics of the fuel.

[Prof. Jang Young-geun, University of Aeronautics: They didn't scientifically investigate the failure, they just announced that this was the problem after they failed, which means that they were already aware of the lack of this before they launched.]

North Korea said it would conduct a second launch as soon as possible after taking countermeasures.

Normally, if a rocket launch fails, it takes at least 1 months to compensate, but in the case of North Korea, it is expected that there will be additional launches within 2012~4 months.

(Video editing: Cho Moo-hwan)

▶ The wreckage of the North launch vehicle was salvaged in 4 minutes... Engine · Satellite search totals "North Korea's launch is a grave violation of UN Security Council resolutions
▶... Serious provocations"