Japan and South Korea on high alert as Pyongyang prepares rocket launch

North Korea is already subject to numerous United Nations sanctions over previous nuclear and rocket tests, and Park said its continued provocative behaviour showed these had been ineffective.

China has strong historical, political and financial concerns that factor into its opposition to sanctions that could undermine or even topple reclusive leader Kim Jong Un’s hardline communist regime.

China has always been friendlier with North Korea than other countries in the region, and has continued to advocate for restraint in handling its neighbor.

( _Korean) “The North’s public announcement of its launch shows a resolute drive, behind which there’s the decision of its leader Kim Jong-un himself”.

(AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon). South Koreans watch a TV news program with a file footage about North Korea’s rocket launch plans, at Seoul Railway Station in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, Feb. 3, 2016.

Also of interest: Iranian media report that Iran will launch a Simorgh rocket, similar to North Korea’s Unha, during festivities to mark the Iranian revolution, scheduled to run through February 11.

Japan plans to deploy land-based missile interceptors in the southwestern islands of Okinawa Prefecture as it ramps up defenses against the anticipated launch of what it views as a North Korean ballistic missile. The launch is widely considered a disguised test of ballistic missile technology.

The defense ministry concluded in its 2015 white paper that if North Korea develops long-range ballistic missiles using technologies tested in the launches, “the missiles could have ranges that potentially reach the central, western and other areas of the US mainland”.

“We are extremely concerned about this”, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang told a briefing.

Pentagon officials strongly condemned the North Korean plans, telling Scout Warrior the planned actions would come of the heels of a January 6 nuclear test – referred to as an egregious violations.

“So far, the diplomacy of the secretary of state has yielded nothing in getting China and Russian Federation to support additional United Nations sanctions on Pyongyang”, Chang complained, noting that such ineffectiveness has made allies such as South Korea uneasy.

The drills were meant to assert the military’s determination not to tolerate North Korea’s nuclear weapons and to raise the combined operational capability of the military’s difference branches, the JCS said in a statement.

With the recent announced plan of North Korea to launch a satellite this month – most likely for space warfare – the United States, Japan, and South Korea are in the same quandary on what to do.

South Korea said earlier on Wednesday that the planned satellite launch was really a plan to launch a long-range missile and warned that the North will pay a “severe price” if it goes ahead.