Kim’s sister vows to launch rocket ‘soon’

The younger sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has vowed to launch a military reconnaissance satellite soon, the country’s state media reported yesterday, a day after its first attempt at doing so failed.

Kim Yo Jong, a senior official of the Workers’ Party of Korea, said in a statement carried by the Korean Central News Agency, “It is certain” that the satellite “will be correctly put on space orbit in the near future and start its mission.”

The statement came as the United States and regional allies Japan and South Korea remained on alert for another attempt by North Korea to launch its first spy satellite.

KCNA also released two photos of what it said was a rocket carrying the satellite lifting off from a launch pad.

South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency said the rare photos of the North’s failed launch were published in an apparent bid to stress it was not a test of a weapons system.

The launch site in the images was presumed to be a new coastal site located around 3 kilometres from the launch pad at the Sohae Satellite Launching Ground on the west coast, the Yonhap report said.

US-based website 38 North, which monitors North Korea, ran a similar assessment.

North Korea said Wednesday its satellite launch failed due to the “low reliability and stability of the new-type engine system.” The South Korean military has said the projectile was a longrange ballistic missile.

An official from the South Korean military said yesterday that part of the projectile fired by the North fell into the Yellow Sea and sunk to a depth of 75 metres.

The Navy is continuing its operation to salvage the part, which is about 15mlong with a diameter of about 2-3m, the official said.

South Korea’s Defense Minister Lee Jong Sup said during a parliamentary session held on the day that the part is presumed to be the rocket’s second stage.

The US and its regional allies immediately condemned Pyongyang’s launch for using ballistic missile technology in violation of UN Security Council resolutions.

Kim Yo Jong, vice department director of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea, said the country has a “sovereign right” to conduct a satellite launch, and criticism of such action violates the “DPRK’s [North Korea’s] right to use space.”

Ms Kim also said it was a “self-contradiction” to criticise North Korea’s action when the US and other countries “have already launched thousands of satellites.”

If countries continue to infringe upon the sovereign right of North Korea, she said, “We will never remain an onlooker to them.”