S Korea slams DPRK for its threat to abandon advance notice of satellite launches

Just days after nuclear-armed North Korea announced that it is “no longer necessary” to give advance notice of its satellite launches to the International Maritime Organization [IMO], its neighbouring arch-rival South Korea expressed deep concerns about Pyongyang's threat. In an escalating sabre-rattling, South Korean Unification Ministry spokesman Koo Byoung-sam, denounced North’s attitude as “drifting further and further away from international norms and common sense, and is very disappointing.” 

South Korean official urged the North to come on the "right" track, adding that such vague threats would only alienate the communist nation from the rest of the international community. On Sunday, North Korea, in an official statement, threatened to stop informing global organisations about its future launches of any satellites. The rampant decision came shortly after the Maritime Safety Committee of the IMO adopted a resolution criticising North Korea's missile launches as “a serious threat to the safety of international shipping.” The draft was proposed at the 107th session of the IMO's Maritime Safety Committee in London. 

This photo provided by the North Korean government, shows what it says a launch of the newly developed Chollima-1 rocket carrying the Malligyong-1 satellite at the Sohae Satellite Launching Ground. Credit: AP

The IMO urged Pyongyang to adhere to maritime safety compliance with due regulations, including giving prior notice before any missile tests. Previously, the MSC had adopted circulars that expressed grave concerns about Pyongyang's ballistic missile launches “without prior notification” to the IMO in 1998, 2006 and 2016. On Sunday Japan’s coast guard, which coordinates and distributes navigational warnings, revealed that it wasn’t notified by North Korea about the missile launch until Monday. Ideally, these warnings must be communicated no less than five days in advance. 

Spy missile launch triggers Japan's J-Alert warning system 

Dictator Kim Jong Un’s authoritarian regime countered a barrage of international criticism after Pyongyang’s failed military reconnaissance satellite launch earlier on May 31. DPRK’s Chollima-1 rocket carrying the Malligyong-1 satellite faltered during the first stage as it separated due to engine malfunction, and "the unstable character of the fuel used," the North’s official Korean Central News Agency [KCNA] reported. 

The launch had triggered Japan's J-Alert warning system, and Japanese residents in the prefecture of Okinawa were urged to "take shelter inside a building or underground immediately.” Just minutes after North Korea’s spy satellite’s launch was unsuccessful, Japan’s top government spokesman, Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno, announced at a press conference that the “apparent ballistic missile” disappeared and could not be tracked over the Yellow Sea. 

United States derided North Korea’s spy satellite launch as the “brazen violation of multiple UN Security Council resolutions" that "raises tensions, and risks destabilizing the security situation in the region and beyond," the US National Security Council spokesman Adam Hodge said in a statement. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemned the failed satellite launch, arguing that North Korea’s ballistic missile launches were in breach of the UN Security Council's resolutions. 

Adam Hodge, a spokesperson at the US National Security Council, noted at a presser that Washington strongly condemns the North Korean so-called “spy satellite” launch, arguing that it employed the banned ballistic missile technology. US also condemned North Korea for escalating regional tensions with its neighbours and risking destabilisation of the security in the region and beyond. UN Security Council, meanwhile, scheduled an emergency meeting to discuss DPRK’s failed launch at the request of Japan, the US, the UK, France, Albania, Ecuador and Malta.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg strongly condemned DPRK's launch using ballistic missile technology. “This blatantly violates several UN Security Council resolutions. It is a threat to neighbours and a challenge to global stability,” he said at a news conference in Oslo, Norway. “This launch raises tensions and poses risks to regional security and beyond.”

DPRK’s military spy satellite 'will be correctly put into space': Kim Jong Un's sister

As criticism mounted for Kim Jong Un’s regime, the authoritarian leader’s powerful sister accused the United States of “gangster-like” hypocrisy, adding that the communist nation’s efforts to acquire space-based reconnaissance capabilities were, in fact, “legitimate.” Kim Yo Jong slammed Hodge’s remarks, saying the United States “is letting loose a hackneyed gibberish prompted by its brigandish and abnormal thinking.” “If the DPRK’s satellite launch should be particularly convicted, the US and all other countries, which have already launched thousands of satellites, should be denounced. This is nothing but sophism of self-contradiction,” Kim Jong Un’s powerful sister asserted, according to KCNA.

Ironically, the US monitors activities in the North through its own reconnaissance satellites and other aerial assets, Kim’s sister noted. She called the Americans a “group of gangsters” who were labelling North’s missile launches as  “illegal and threatening.” “The far-fetched logic that only the DPRK should not be allowed to do so according to the (U.N. Security Council’s) ‘resolution’ which bans the use of ballistic rocket technology irrespective of its purpose, though other countries are doing so, is clearly a gangster-like and wrong one of seriously violating the DPRK’s right to use space and illegally oppressing it,” Kim Yo Jong reportedly asserted. 

“It is certain that the DPRK’s military reconnaissance satellite will be correctly put into space orbit in the near future and start its mission,” she added. 

DPRK clarified that it does not recognize UN Security Council sanctions on its space program, adding that it will defend itself against the “hostile” US policy. The country reproached the UN's “unbalanced and prejudiced” double standards. “The DPRK’s launch of military reconnaissance satellite is a logical and legitimate response to the undisguised military threat of the US and its allies,” Jo Chol Su, director general of the Department of International Organizations at the North Korean Foreign Ministry, said in response to UN chief Guterres’ remarks, NK news confirmed. 

It is “an exercise of the universal right of a sovereign state to defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity,” he added. “Nobody is entitled to take issue with this, even though he is the UN secretary-general.”