North Korea Possibly Preparing for Ballistic Missile Launches

“We sternly warn North Korea that it will pay a harsh price” if it goes ahead, he was quoted as saying.

“This latest announcement further underscores the need for the global community to send the North Koreans a swift, firm message that its disregard – that their disregard for U.N. Security Council obligations will not be tolerated”, said the US State Department spokesman John Kirby.

Worldwide pressure has grown on North Korea to call off a planned rocket launch, seen by some governments as another missile test, since Pyongyang told United Nations agencies this week it would launch what it called an “earth observation satellite”. Spokesman Moon Sang Gyun said South Korea is using Aegis-equipped destroyers, aircraft, sophisticated radars and other surveillance assets to monitor the North’s launch preparations but refused to provide further details.

Kerry stressed that China and the USA agreed with the goal of a nuclear-free Korean peninsula, but added, “It’s good to agree on the goal, but it’s not enough to agree on the goal”.

North Korea said the launch would be conducted in the morning one day during the announced period, and notified the coordinates for the locations where the rocket boosters and the cover for the payload would drop.

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”.

The North said it plans to launch a rocket from its Dongchang-ri base in the country’s northwest between Feb 8 and 25. “Given that the rocket launch plan came at a time when the UNSC hadn’t imposed sanctions and China’s senior representative to the six-party talks Wu Dawei was visiting, it looks as though internal motivations were a bigger variable than external considerations”, said Chang Yong-seok, a senior researcher at the Seoul National University Institute for Peace and Unification Studies.

South Korea is on high alert after the North’s announced plans to launch an “Earth observation satellite”, and designated a no-fly zone for commercial flights Wednesday, CBS No Cut News reported.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe says he will work with the U.S. and others to strongly demand that North Korea refrain from what he describes as a planned missile launch. The most obvious is that only a month ago, North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un claimed that the country had successfully denoted a hydrogen bomb for the first time. The new satellite, if it succeeds in reaching orbit, is expected to last four years, North Korea says.

“Right now, we’re carefully monitoring developments and are in close touch with worldwide organizations”, Haq said at United Nations headquarters in NY.

The move sparked intense warnings and criticism from South Korea, Japan, Russia and the United States.