South Korea says it’s beefing up protection after North claims to have a spy satellite

South Korea’s Spy-Satellite Launch of a U.S. Airborne Defense System is a Political Appendage of the United States

The country claimed it had placed a spy satellite into its third attempt, demonstrating its determination to build a space-based defense system during the ongoing tensions with the United States.

The South Korean announcement — which will likely infuriate North Korea — came hours after the North claimed to have placed a military reconnaissance satellite into orbit in its third such launch attempt this year.

Heo said that South Korean will suspend the truce for a while to resume aerial patrols again at the border. He said the decision was approved at South Korea’s Cabinet Council meeting earlier Wednesday.

The rocket carrying a satellite flew from the Korean Peninsula’s west coast to the Pacific Ocean and back, according to assessments from both Japan and South Korea. The Japanese government briefly put out a missile warning, urging residents to take shelter.

North Korea is under 11 rounds of U.N. sanctions over its past nuclear and missile tests. But it’s unlikely for the North to be hit with fresh sanctions over Tuesday’s launch. Russia and China have already stymied any U.N. Security Council response over the North’s recent series of launch activities.

In June, Kim’s sister and senior ruling party official, Kim Yo Jong, called the Security Council “a political appendage” of the United States. She said the council was discriminative and rude, as it only cared about the North’s satellite launches, rather than the thousands of satellites that have already been launched by other countries.

In the first attempt, the North Korean rocket carrying the satellite crashed into the ocean soon after liftoff. The rocket lost power after the separation of the first and second stages. After the second attempt, North Korea said there was an error in the emergency blasting system during the third-stage flight.

In 2012 and 2016 North Korea placed Earth observation satellites in the sky, but they have never been used to transmit imagery to North Korea.

A spy satellite is one of the weapons systems Kim wants to introduce. When diplomacy resume, Kim would try to use his expanded arsenal to win concessions from the U.S.

In response, the U.S. and South Korea have been expanding their regular military exercises and increasing the temporary deployments of powerful U.S. military assets in South Korea. On Tuesday, the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier and its battle group arrived at a South Korean port in a fresh demonstration of strength against North Korea.

Since last year, North Korea conducted about 100 missile tests in a bid to establish a reliable arsenal of nuclear weapons targeting the U.S. and its allies. Many foreign experts think that North Korea has some last remaining technologies that can be used to make nuclear missiles.

“What is already clear is that this is not a one-off event but part of a North Korean strategy of prioritizing military capabilities over economic development, threatening rather than reconciling with South Korea, and further aligning with Russia and China instead of pursuing diplomacy with the United States,” Easley said.

Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul, said Tuesday’s launch raises more questions than answers, such as whether the North Korean satellite actually performs reconnaissance functions and whether Russia provided technical and even material assistance.

Russia and North Korea dismissed the allegation of their arms transfer deal as groundless. Weapons trading with North Korea is not allowed by the U.N.

During Kim’s visit to Russia, Putin told state media that his country would help North Korea build satellites.

The National Aerospace Technology Administration called the launch a legitimate right of North Korea to bolster its self-defense capabilities. The spy satellite would allow the North to improve its war preparations in the face of the enemies’ dangerous military moves.

The North’s space agency said that its new “Chollima-1” carrier rocket accurately placed the Malligyong-1 satellite into orbit on Tuesday night, about 12 minutes after liftoff from the country’s main launch center.

“Our understanding is that so far there is no confirmation of a satellite placed into Earth’s orbit,” Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno said. It would take a fair amount of time to verify the fate of the North’s launch, but he avoided calling it a failure.

North Korea used the same satellite in its two failed launches in May and August. The debris from the first launch was retrieved by South Korea’s military and it said the satellite was too crude for military use.

The brief Korean rapprochement period later evaporated soon after the collapse of broader nuclear diplomacy between North Korea and the U.S. in 2019. North Korea has since ramped up missile tests to modernize its weapons arsenal, prompting the U.S. and South Korea to expand their defense exercises in response.

The deal provoked withering conservative criticism in South Korea, with critics saying that the deal restricted the operation of the country’s aerial assets which are more superior to North Korea’s. They also accused the deal of heavily benefiting North Korea, because it only called for mutual reductions of conventional military strength while leaving the North’s growing nuclear arsenal intact. South Korea has no nuclear weapons.

The 2018 agreement, struck during a short-lived era of reconciliation between the rival Koreas, created buffer and no-fly zones along the countries’ heavily fortified border. Under the deal, the Koreas were required to halt frontline aerial reconnaissance of each other and live-firing exercises and removed some of their guard posts and landmines at border areas.

He said that South Korea would punish North Korea if it used the South Korean step as an excuse to launch another provocation.