Russian Federation urges North Korea to shun rocket launch plan

South Korea press reported that in talks with the North Wu could have apprised officials of the inevitability of stronger sanctions in the wake of the country’s fourth nuclear test and an impending rocket launch.

“Deep concern was expressed over North Korea’s announcement of planned launch of a rocket”, the foreign ministry said.

South Korean President Park Geun-Hye on Thursday said a planned rocket launch by North Korea could “never be tolerated”, as her defence ministry vowed to shoot down any missile that threatened its territory.

The NHK report said the mobile missile launcher was thought to normally remain stationary in places such as an underground facility.

The South Korean Ministry of National Defense yesterday said that the North was pushing ahead with the launch plans at its west coast Tongchang-ri launch site.

(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.

The US and its allies have long maintained that North Korea’s satellite launches are veiled tests of its long-range ballistic missile technologies, and Pyongyang has been warned that a rocket launch so soon after its detonation of a nuclear weapon would be seen as further provocation.

The rocket will purportedly launch a North Korean “earth observation satellite” into orbit.

Chang wondered if the North Koreans and Iranians could be so proud of successfully testing such a missile that they dropped all pretense of a “satellite launch”, and whether “a bold statement of that sort might even get the no-pulse John Kerry to do something about North Korea’s troublesome weapons programs”.

However, the Web site said it was impossible to tell from the satellite imagery whether a space launch vehicle was present. If the missile follows a similar route to the 2012 launch, the first stage will fall into the Yellow Sea, more debris is likely to come down near South Korea’s Jeju Island and the second stage will fall into the Pacific off the east coast of the Philippines.

North Korea, an autocracy run by the same family since 1948, is estimated to have a handful of crude nuclear devices and an impressive array of short- and medium-range missiles, but it closely guards details about its nuclear and missile programs.

North Korea’s nuclear program and its ballistic missile program have been proceeding along separate but parallel paths, raising suspicions that the country is feverishly working on perfecting a bomb that could fit on the head of a missile.