North Korea's widely touted launch of its first spy satellite ended early Wednesday morning in the Yellow Sea. At 6:27 a.m. local time, the rocket had flown off from the satellite launch facility in Sohae on North Korea's west coast. But the second launch stage misfired, which led to the crash of the projectile and satellite, as the state news agency KCNA announced. The regime had given the satellite the name "Malligyong-1", Great Wall. A second launch attempt will be made "as soon as possible".
Jochen Stahnke
Political correspondent for China, Taiwan and North Korea, based in Beijing.
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A spokesman for the North Korean space agency Nada attributed the failure to the low reliability of the "novel" engine system of the launch vehicle "Chollima-1" and to the unstable nature of the fuel used. According to the South Korean military, the missile had an "abnormal flight" before falling into the water. South Korea on Wednesday released images of debris from the missile that the military was able to recover in the sea. For a short time, a missile alert had been triggered in parts of South Korea and Okinawa, Japan.
For North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un and his regime, the failure is yet another embarrassment. In 1998, 2009 and 2012, North Korea failed to launch its own satellites. At the end of 2012 and 2016, the regime succeeded in launching Earth satellites into space. According to American findings, however, these have never sent signals and are still drifting through orbit as space debris.
The situation for Pyongyang has now become more urgent due to the increasing military cooperation between South Korea and the United States. Washington has recently returned to South Korea with aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines. A few days ago, the two allies also fired massive artillery and simulated attacks with fighter jets as part of their latest maneuver north of Seoul. The regime in North Korea described the maneuvers as invasion exercises.
Data collection for nuclear tests
North Korea's deputy chairman of the military commission, Kim confidant Ri Pyong-chol, said shortly before the failed satellite launch that its own reconnaissance satellite was "indispensable for tracking, monitoring, distinguishing, controlling and countering the dangerous military actions of the US and its vassal powers in advance in real time." At the same time, however, its own satellite could provide the regime with better data acquisition for its own nuclear tests and also observe areas over the United States.
The White House condemned Wednesday's launch "in the strongest possible terms." This "concerned technologies directly related to North Korea's missile program," National Security Council spokesman Adam Hodge said, adding, "The door to diplomacy has not yet closed, but Pyongyang must immediately stop its provocative actions and opt for dialogue instead." UN Security Council resolutions prohibit North Korea from launching satellites, not least because the missile technology required for this is largely the same as that of intercontinental ballistic missiles, which Pyongyang has been testing regularly since 2017.
But the isolated and insecure Kim regime does not want to fall behind strategically. Just last week, South Korea successfully launched eight of its own satellites into space and announced that it would also launch its first own reconnaissance satellite into orbit by 2025. During a visit to the space agency earlier this month, Kim Jong-un highlighted the strategic importance that a North Korean spy satellite could have in the conflict with the US and South Korea. In the 2021 five-year plan for the military, the dictator declared the development of such a satellite a central goal.
The international community, on the other hand, has shown no leisure since the last failed attempt at negotiations, when then-President Donald Trump met Kim Jong-un in Hanoi in 2019, to respond to the regime that has failed every phase of negotiations with military tests over the decades. In addition, the Ukraine war has drawn Western attention to other fields. In any case, in May last year, President Joe Biden, when asked if he had anything to say to North Korea, only replied: "Hello. Period."
But observers also recognize that North Korea always ramps up its weapons and missile tests in those phases when it is supposedly shown disinterest. Since Biden's "hello", at least since 2022, Pyongyang has launched more than a hundred missiles, some of which may be able to carry nuclear warheads. Most recently, in April, this included the test of a solid-propellant-powered intercontinental ballistic missile. Since 2022, North Korea has also been threatening a seventh nuclear test, which has not yet taken place. The regime's fear of its own annihilation was demonstrated last September, when Pyongyang decided to launch pre-emptive nuclear strikes even if it believes that a conventional pre-emptive strike against its own regime is imminent. For such findings, in turn, a separate reconnaissance satellite would be helpful.