North Korea has claimed its recently launched satellite has sent back “detailed” images of the White House, the Pentagon and US nuclear aircraft carriers that have been viewed by the regime leader, Kim Jong-un.
The existence of the images has not been independently verified, and experts say it is too soon to determine if the Malligyong-1 spy satellite is functioning properly, a week after its launch.
On Tuesday, the state-run KCNA news agency said Kim, who viewed the launch then hosted a banquet for scientists and space programme workers, had viewed photos of the two US government sites, which were taken late on Monday night.
The satellite also took photographs of a US naval base, a shipyard and an airfield in Virginia, KCNA said, adding that the images contained four US nuclear aircraft carriers and a British aircraft carrier.
The regime in Pyongyang will be eager to extract maximum propaganda value from last Tuesday’s launch, which drew immediate condemnation from Washington and raised tensions along the heavily armed inter-Korean border.
The North has also claimed the satellite took photos of military installations in South Korea, as well as the US Pacific territory of Guam and the state of Hawaii. None of the images have been made public.
Military officials in South Korea say they believe Malligyong-1 has entered orbit, but have so far been unable to tell if it is capable of taking and sending images from space.
The spy satellite, which is thought to have been made possible with Russian technological help, sparked angry scenes at the UN security council on Monday.
UN sanctions apply to North Korean satellites because they incorporate banned technology used in the regime’s ballistic missile programme.
“The DPRK has made its motivations clear,” Washington’s ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, told the council, using the North’s official name the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
“The DPRK is unabashedly trying to advance its nuclear weapons delivery systems by testing ballistic missile technology in clear violation of this council’s resolutions. This reckless unlawful behaviour threatens all of the DPRK’s neighbours and all member states.”
In a rare appearance at the security council, the North’s ambassador to the UN, Kim Song, accused critics of hypocrisy. “No other nation in the world is in a security environment as critical as the DPRK,” Kim said. “One belligerent party, the United States, is threatening us with a nuclear weapon.
“It is a legitimate right for the DPRK as another belligerent party to develop, test, manufacture and possess weapons systems equivalent to those that the United States possesses or is developing.”
He also mocked US criticism that satellite technology was being used to improve the North’s missile capability, asking whether Washington launched its own satellites “with a catapult”.
South Korean intelligence officials have said they believe Russia helped the North launch Malligyong-1 in return for ammunition for the war in Ukraine.
Kim Jong-un and Vladimir Putin have denied striking an arms deal during their summit in September, but the US said Pyongyang had so far provided the Kremlin with more than 1,000 containers of military equipment and munitions.
With Reuters and Agence France-Presse
