North Korea says it fired a ‘space launch vehicle’

2023-05-31 01:22:05

Asia quivers again. There North Korea fired a rocket on Wednesday that it presented as a “space launch vehicle”, according to the South Korean army, briefly triggering alerts in Seoul and in the Japanese archipelago of Okinawa (south). Pyongyang fired “what it calls a space launch vehicle” south, the South Korean general staff said.

The South Korean military is investigating whether the device exploded in flight or crashed as the device quickly disappeared from radar, Yonhap news agency reported. “The (North Korean) projecticle disappeared from radar before reaching its expected landing point,” said the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff, quoted by Yonhap, referring to the possibility that the device “exploded in flight or crashed”.

Alerts in Japan and South Korea

“Missile launch. Missile launch. North Korea appears to have launched a missile. Please take shelter inside buildings or underground,” said the alert tweeted by the Japanese Prime Minister’s Office to residents of Okinawa, and broadcast by national broadcaster NHK.

However, the government canceled its alert 30 minutes later, considering that all danger had passed. “It is expected that the missile mentioned earlier will not arrive in Japan. The call to evacuate is lifted,” he tweeted.

South Korea also canceled an alert issued by the city of Seoul, which sounded sirens and sent a critical emergency message to all mobile phones asking residents to prepare to evacuate by passing “children and the elderly first”. “We inform you that the alert issued by the Seoul metropolitan authorities at 6:41 a.m. was incorrectly launched,” said the South Korean Ministry of Interior.

military satellite

North Korea announced on Tuesday that it would launch a “military reconnaissance satellite” in order to “deal with the dangerous military actions of the United States and its vassals”, Japan for its part believing that it would act as a disguised ballistic missile launch.

The Japanese Ministry of Defense had ordered the downing of any missile whose fall on its land or sea territory was confirmed, and had deployed SM-3 and Patriot PAC-3 type interceptor missiles for this purpose.