North Korea again sought to put a spy satellite in orbit after its first attempt, in May, failed due to second-stage flight issues. The latest effort failed due to “an error in the emergency blasting system during the third-stage flight,” according to the official Korean Central News Agency in Pyongyang. The first and second stages of the rocket operated normally, the state news agency said.
South Korea said it detected what the North called a “space launch vehicle” flying above international waters west of the Korean Peninsula. The South’s military tracked the flight from its liftoff at about 3:50 a.m. from the North’s Tongchang-ri area, and also declared it as a failure.
Pyongyang had warned in May that the Kim regime needed a “reliable reconnaissance information system” so that it could keep “a grip on enemy military activities in real time,” citing joint military drills between the United States and South Korea. The North’s latest launch came as the two allies were conducting a 11-day-long exercises, which includes field training events based on war scenarios.
North Korea’s first attempt at a satellite launch on May 31, failed when “serious” defects caused the second stage of the new type of rocket to malfunction. It lost thrust midair due to engine failure and fell into the sea between South Korea and China, landing in on the sea border between their exclusive economic zones. Some of the debris from the satellite launch was recovered by South Korea’s military, which said the satellite was not advanced enough to conduct space-based reconnaissance.
The North Korean military at the time vowed to “conduct the second launch as soon as possible through various part tests.”
North Korea notified Japan that it plans to again launch a satellite between Aug. 24 and Aug. 31, without specifying the type of the satellite.
Tokyo said Thursday that parts of the North Korean rocket appear to have fallen into the sea between Japan and the Korean Peninsula, the East China Sea and the Pacific Ocean outside the maritime zones announced earlier by the Pyongyang.
The United States, South Korea and Japan all condemned the launch, which is considered a breach of U.N. Security Council resolutions that sanction the regime for using ballistic missile technology.
North Korea has proved it can master difficult technology through repeated testing and refining. After numerous missile failures during 2017, North Korea successfully launched its first intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) — on a “lofted” trajectory, so it went up and fell back into the sea.
Since then, it has refined its technology through repeated launches, firing more than 100 missiles since the beginning of 2022. While many of these represent only incremental progress, leader Kim Jong Un last month presided over the second test of a solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missile, the Hwasong-18.
Missiles propelled by solid-fuel propellants are easier to operate than liquid-propelled missiles and faster to deploy as they can be wheeled into place and launched immediately, without the kind of preparations required for liquid-propelled missiles. That makes them harder to detect in advance.
