China urges restraint over North Korea rocket launch

(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.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe condemned what he called a “serious provocation”, while his defence minister issued an order to “destroy” the rocket with surface-to-air missiles if it threatened to fall on Japanese territory. Wu Dawei traveled to Pyongyang on Tuesday to meet with senior North Korean officials, widely seen as a move to address the tensions triggered by North Korea’s nuclear test.

In Seoul, Cho Tae-yong, deputy chief of the presidential office of national security, warned that North Korea would have to pay “a harsh price” if it did not cancel the launch.

North Korea has made it official that it’s planning a satellite launch, which many countries (including the United States and South Korea) view as a thinly veiled pretext for testing out a ballistic missile.

He said it would strengthen the argument for the worldwide community to impose “real consequences” on North Korea for destabilising behavior.

North Korea has shown off two versions of a ballistic missile resembling a type that could reach the U.S. West Coast, but there is no evidence the missiles have been tested.

A scenario similar to the current one unfolded in 2012, when North Korea announced it was launching a rocket carrying a satellite.

“We have to state that intending to violate the UN Security Council requirements again the North Korean side demonstrates its defiant disregard for the generally recognized rules of global law”, the Foreign Ministry said.

Pyongyang informed United Nations agencies this week that it planned to launch an “earth observation satellite” later this month.

China, North Korea’s diplomatic backer and economic lifeline, has expressed displeasure over the North’s nuclear and missile programs, but resisted calls for tougher new sanctions against North Korea following the latest nuclear test.

He is suspected of having purchased six computer equipment items online, the report said, adding that police found written instructions and encrypted e-mail messages from North Korea’s spy agency on his confiscated computer.

“We hope North Korea exercises self-restraint and acts with prudence and does not take action which may lead to a further escalation of tensions in the situation on the Korean peninsula”, Kang said.

Moscow is deeply concerned over Pyongyang’s planned carrier rocket launch, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement released on Wednesday.

That said, any nuclear threat from North Korea is still a major geopolitical concern given that Kim Jong-un recently warned that “if invasive outsiders and provocateurs touch us even slightly, we will not be forgiving in the least and sternly answer with a merciless, holy war of justice”. They said the blast was too small for it to have been a full-fledged hydrogen bomb.