North Korea Launches Rocket One-Day Before Super Bowl Sunday

The North Koreans have provided the US with some pre-Super Bowl fireworks:

North Korea launched a long-range rocket on Sunday carrying what it has called a satellite, but its neighbors and Washington denounced the launch as a missile test, conducted in defiance of U.N. sanctions and just weeks after a nuclear bomb test.

The U.S. Strategic Command said it had detected a missile entering space and South Korea’s military said the rocket had put an object into orbit, quashing earlier media reports indicating the rocket might have failed in flight.

“Everything we have seen is consistent with a successful repeat of the 2012 (launch),” said U.S. missile technology expert John Schilling, referring to a previous launch of what the North said was a communications satellite.

“But it’s still too early to tell for sure,” said Schilling, who is involved in the “38 North” monitoring project at Johns Hopkins University.

The rocket was launched at around 9:30am Seoul time (7.30 p.m. ET/0030 GMT) in a southward trajectory. Japan’s Fuji Television Network showed a streak of light heading into the sky, taken from a camera at China’s border with North Korea.  [Reuters]

You can read more at the link, but I thought the North Koreans may try and launch this right after the Super Bowl or during halftime in an attempt to garner additional media attention in the US.  The timing today means they will dominate the media cycle until the Super Bowl starts and then this launch will be largely forgotten by most Americans.

Anyway something dangerous about the timing was that the North Koreans fired before their announced launch window by giving a last minute notification to the International Maritime Organization to get aircraft out of the area:

Japanese and South Korean airlines  altered flight paths to avoid possible falling rocket parts. Based on coordinates provided by North Korea to the IMO, the first stage and fairing of the rocket will drop off in waters between South Korea and China. Its second stage is expected to fall into waters off the Philippines’ northern coast.  [CNN]

The North Koreans apparently launched the rocket early because of favorable weather conditions.

But on Friday, North Korea informed United Nations agencies including the International Maritime Organization (IMO) that it will move up its expected launch window to between Feb. 7 and Feb. 10.

Seoul officials saw the move to reflect the good weather during that time frame. [Joong Ang Ilbo]

What is more important is how well did the rocket perform?  The ROK government is confirming that an object was put into orbit:

South Korea’s Defense Ministry has confirmed that the payload on North Korea’s long-range missile entered into orbit:

A ministry official said, however, that more analysis is needed to confirm if the alleged satellite is normally operating.

The North Korean long-range missile launch was first detected at 9:31 a.m. by the South Korean Air Force’s Peace Eye aircraft and identified by the Navy’s Aegis destroyer as a missile.

The defense ministry said that the missile was successful in its first-stage separation at around 9:32 a.m., with the first stage exploding in midair into about 270 pieces in the process.

It said the missile appears to have disappeared from the South Korean military’s surveillance radar right after the missile shed its fairing southwest of Jeju Island at 9:36 a.m.  [KBS Global]

What will next be interesting to see is if the object is tumbling or not within orbit which reportedly their 2012 satellite was doing.  This will be a big achievement for the North Koreans if they actually do have a functioning satellite in orbit.

World leaders for their part are giving their usual condemnations of the launch which violated UN sanctions once again to include ROK President Park Geun-hye:

As North Korea pushed ahead with a long-range rocket launch in defiance of international warnings, the South Korean president convened a meeting of her National Security Council. At the meeting, President Park Geun-hye called for joint action among the international community to deal with North Korea.
Our Kim Bum-soo reports.

Report: President Park Geun-hye has strongly condemned North Korea’s long-range missile launch, calling it a direct challenge to the international community.

Presiding over the National Security Council(NSC) meeting at the presidential office on Sunday, Park stressed that the global community must come up with strong sanction measures to penalize the North.

[Sound bite: President Park Geun-hye (Korean)]
“This long-range-missile launch is a direct challenge to the international community as it came whilst the UN Security Council is discussing sanctions against North Korea for its nuclear test… The move by the North is a direct violation of the UNSC resolutions that ban ballistic missile launches, and the Security Council must swiftly produce strong measures under the perception that Pyongyang’s missiles and nuclear weapons pose a real threat to the international community.”

Calling the launch an unacceptable provocation, the South Korean president stressed that the missile launch is aimed at advancing the nuclear delivery system alongside nuclear weapons development.

She said that the government should take all necessary measures to strengthen the response capabilities under the South Korea-U.S. alliance.  [KBS Global]

I guess we will see what happens, but I doubt any serious consequences will happen to the North Koreans because the Chinese will continue to block or circumvent any real sanctions against the regime.

As more details about the launch become available I will post them here on the ROK Drop.