North Korea is already believed to be capable of striking the US mainland with a nuclear weapon; now it claims that it can spy on enemy troops, after state media reported the regime’s first successful launch of a surveillance satellite, drawing an immediate response from South Korea.
While Japan, South Korea and the US could not immediately confirm if the satellite’s payload had entered orbit late on Tuesday, a North Korean presence in space would add to military tensions on the peninsula and highlight the ineffectiveness of international sanctions.
Hours after the North’s space agency claimed its Chollima-1 rocket had “accurately placed” the Malligyong-1 satellite into orbit, the South said it was partially suspending an agreement designed to lower cross-border tensions. The defence ministry in Seoul said it would also resume aerial surveillance activities near the countries’ heavily armed border.
North Korea could use satellites to more effectively target South Korea and Japan or conduct damage assessments during a war, according to Ankit Panda at the US-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
But even if, as some experts believe, the satellite is not technologically advanced enough to conduct military reconnaissance, it underlines Pyongyang’s ability to sidestep UN sanctions targeting its ballistic missile and nuclear weapons programmes – possibly with help from another internationally isolated regime: the Kremlin.
While the launch differed from the volley of ballistic missile tests overseen by the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, in the past two years, it drew on the same technologies the regime uses to test its increasingly sophisticated intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).
That will only generate further unease in Seoul, Tokyo and Washington, where officials quickly condemned North Korea’s latest provocation.
The US national security council spokesperson, Adrienne Watson, said the launch “raises tensions and risks destabilising the security situation in the region and beyond”.
Possessing a rocket that can place a satellite into orbit suggests that the North can also build a missile capable of carrying a warhead of a size comparable to the satellite – a worrying development acknowledged by the South Korean president, Yoon Suk Yeol, who said last week that the successful launch of a reconnaissance satellite “would signify that North Korea’s ICBM capabilities have been taken to a higher level”.
The move has already soured already precarious ties between North and South Korea, whose hardline leader was informed of the launch during a state visit to Britain.
Officials in Seoul said they would immediately suspend a 2018 agreement and resume “frontline aerial surveillance” of North Korea. The inter-Korean comprehensive military created buffer zones and no-fly zones near the heavily armed inter-Korean border and includes a ban on the use of artillery, naval drills and surveillance activities, as well as open lines of communication.
In Japan, the prime minister, Fumio Kishida, said the satellite launch posed a “serious threat that affects the safety of the people”.
While some civilian experts believe the Malligyong-1 satellite can probably only identify large targets such as warships and planes, the use of multiple satellites promised by the North would vastly improve its ability to remotely monitor US, South Korean and Japanese troops.
Irrespective of its practical applications, Kim will extract maximum propaganda value from the launch – which came after two embarrassing failures in May and August.
Developing a working surveillance satellite is a key component of his mission to improve the North’s ability to counter what he sees as increasing threats from the US, whose aircraft carrier the USS Carl Vinson and its battle group arrived at the South Korean port of Busan this week in the latest demonstration of US firepower in the region.
It will take time to gain a comprehensive understanding of the satellite’s technological strengths, but officials in South Korea believe it could have incorporated unspecified Russian expertise – “payment” for the North’s alleged shipment of munitions for the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine.
During his much-publicised trip to Russia in September, Kim discussed space technology with Vladimir Putin, who took his counterpart on a tour of Russia’s state-of-the-art Vostochny cosmodrome.
Its practical usefulness aside, the satellite is another sign that the prospects for a resurrection of “nuclear diplomacy” with Washington are their dimmest since Kim’s failed summit with Donald Trump in 2019.
“What is already clear is that this is not a one-off event but part of a North Korean strategy of prioritising military capabilities over economic development, threatening rather than reconciling with South Korea, and further aligning with Russia and China instead of pursuing diplomacy with the United States,” said Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul.
Easley said there were “many reasons to be sceptical’ about the North’s claims about the satellite. “State-controlled media claims of a successful launch do not mean the satellite will actually perform meaningful reconnaissance functions,” he added.
Chad O’Carroll, founder of the NK News website, said the regime could now claim to possess a military reconnaissance satellite, provided it could communicate with North Korean base stations.
“South Korea’s government will attempt to suggest the satellite has little to no military reconnaissance value and try and reassure citizens its military capabilities remain hidden,” O’Carroll wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. “But even if capabilities are relatively basic, the satellite will give real-time intelligence on military movements and installations throughout the region. This is a big shift.”
With Reuters and Associated Press
