North Korea has confirmed that it will launch its first spy satellite in June, with a senior official citing a need to monitor the U.S. and its allies “in real time” as they hold a series of ongoing joint military exercises, state-run media said Tuesday.
Japan on Monday ordered the Self-Defense Forces to prepare to shoot down a North Korean ballistic missile or rocket that threatens Japanese territory, the Defense Ministry said, after Pyongyang notified Tokyo of plans to launch the satellite before June 11.
The satellite as well as “various reconnaissance means due to be newly tested are indispensable to tracking, monitoring, discriminating, controlling and coping with … the dangerous military acts of the U.S. and its vassal forces,” Ri Pyong Chol, vice chairman of the Central Military Commission of the ruling Workers’ Party, said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.
The U.S. and South Korea have conducted numerous joint military drills in recent months, including large-scale live-fire exercises — called “combined annihilation firepower drills” — that will run through June.
The plan to put a satellite into orbit — the North’s first space rocket launch in more than seven years — has been met with condemnation.
“Satellite launches incorporate technology that is nearly identical to and compatible with that used in ballistic missiles, and we believe that, regardless of the terminology used by North Korea, the one planned for this time will also use ballistic missile technology,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno told a news conference Tuesday, adding that the use of such technology violated United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolutions.
Matsuno said Japan was working closely with the U.S. and South Korea to monitor the situation while urging North Korea to refrain from provocative acts.
Japan is not taking any chances, ordering the SDF to be ready to destroy any rocket or debris that might threaten its territory after the government said the rocket could fly over Okinawa Prefecture.
“If there is a recognized threat that a North Korean missile will fall into Japanese territory, all necessary measures, including interception, will be taken,” Matsuno said.
The government believes the rocket could fly over Okinawa’s Sakishima Islands, a path similar to a 2016 North Korean satellite launch, with stages or other debris potentially falling in three spots — in the Yellow Sea, East China Sea and in waters east of the Philippines’ Luzon Island.
The preparations have included sending PAC-3 ground-based missile-defense batteries to Okinawa’s Miyako, Ishigaki and Yonaguni islands, as well as deploying Maritime Self-Defense Force Aegis destroyers — which are equipped with SM-3 interceptors — to waters around Japan.
The MSDF’s Aegis destroyers equipped with SM-3s are designed to shoot down ballistic missiles outside the atmosphere, while the PAC-3 systems — which have a range of 30 kilometers — are used to intercept missiles that evade the SM-3s, and are seen as the last line of defense.
The government will also work to issue evacuation notices, if necessary, via its J-Alert system, in which messages are sent in times of national emergencies such as earthquakes, terrorist attacks and certain missile launches.
In Washington on Monday, a State Department spokesman echoed Matsuno’s words by saying that any launch would violate multiple UNSC resolutions.
Pyongyang is prohibited from conducting ballistic missile launches under UNSC resolutions, but has in the past said these measures do not cover its nominally civilian space program. Japan, South Korea and the U.S., however, view the launch of satellites as a thinly veiled means of advancing its missile program, since similar technology is employed.
Observers say that any satellite launch could also employ components of one of its larger intercontinental ballistic missiles, such as the Hwasong-17.
Although the June launch could truly be a “space launch,” the use of components from a system already acknowledged by Pyongyang to be an ICBM would almost assuredly prompt international condemnation.
Source: Japan Times
