North Korea has placed a satellite into orbit, according to South Korea’s military officials, an achievement that stokes Western suspicions that the rogue regime has a new patron in Russia.
“After a comprehensive analysis of its flight track data and other signs, the satellite is assessed to have entered into orbit,” the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a message to journalists, including Yonhap. “However, determining whether the satellite is working properly will take time as additional analysis is required under coordination between South Korea and the United States and relevant agencies.”
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That launch represents a technological watershed, an ominous portent of the communist regime’s emergence as a nascent space power 13 years after North Korea first tested a nuclear weapon. South Korea responded by increasing military surveillance of North Korea in a step back from a 2018 agreement intended to reduce tensions between the two states, and the United States and leading democratic powers issued their own condemnation.
“Any launch using ballistic missile technology, even if it is characterized as a military reconnaissance satellite, constitutes a clear, flagrant violation of relevant United Nations Security Council Resolutions (UNSCRs),” the G-7 said Wednesday. “North Korea continues to expand its unlawful nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities and to escalate its destabilizing activities.”
Lee Jin-man/AP
The breakthrough comes just two months after Russian President Vladimir Putin hosted North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un for a tour of the Vostochny Cosmodrome, a high-profile meeting that took place amid a series of talks that Western officials have linked to Russia’s need for North Korean ammunition during the war in Ukraine.
“It didn’t used to be this bad,” Hudson Institute senior fellow Rebecca Heinrichs, a member of the congressionally established Strategic Posture Commission, told the Washington Examiner. “And if North Korea is doing things like successfully orbiting satellites, spy satellites, and demonstrating some proficiency with advanced technology, it does not take an expert to deduce that they’re getting help from the countries that are leaders in advanced tech — and that’s China and Russia.”
The G-7 powers stopped short of accusing Putin of providing the spy satellite technology, but they emphasized that Russia has an obligation under U.N. Security Council resolutions not to aid such endeavors.
“We reiterate our strong condemnation on arms transfers from North Korea to Russia, which directly violate relevant UNSCRs,” they said. “In addition, we are deeply concerned about the potential for any transfer of nuclear- or ballistic missile-related technology to North Korea, which would further threaten the peace and stability of the region as well as across the globe.”
Russia, for its part, has denied “allegedly illegal military-technological or military-technical cooperation” with North Korea and faulted South Korea for expanding its surveillance of the border.
“As we see, all this has prompted a painful response from Seoul, Tokyo, and Washington,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Wednesday. “Of course, all this is fraught with the risk of spiraling into a large-scale conflict.”
The satellite launch points to several potential military capabilities for Pyongyang, according to U.S. and South Korean analysts.
“If the satellite launch was successful, it is expected to significantly contribute to enhancing the North Korean tactical nuclear force’s precision strike capabilities by closely monitoring the preemptive strike targets of South Korea and the U.S. through the reconnaissance satellite system,” Kyungnam University professor Lim Eul-chul, told Yonhap. “This essentially means the North’s advancement of preemptive strike capabilities.”
The launch also points to North Korea’s potential to conduct other military operations in space, according to American analysts, who agreed on the growing risk that Pyongyang will develop a capability to target U.S. satellites.
“It’s widely believed that in the early stages of a major conflict between China or Russia that those countries would do their best to take out America’s satellites,” the Atlantic Council’s Matthew Kroenig told the Washington Examiner. “It’s believed that … Russia and China are also putting satellites in space intended to be used as weapons, so essentially using their satellites to attack our satellites and so North Korea could [eventually] do the same thing.”
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The placement of the satellite in orbit could point to a threat that extends beyond the interests of the states on the Korean Peninsula. Putin has a growing military relationship with Iran, which has provided Russia with attack drones for us in Ukraine. And Russia hosted a senior Iranian official in Moscow last month to discuss “the Iranian missile program, [and] international cooperation with Tehran in this field” after the expiration of the U.N. arms embargo on Iran.
“North Korea and Iran are obviously still much lesser powerful countries, which with much, much smaller resources to deal with, but … it’s such a big deal when you have these major power patrons who are willing to openly [provide] and perhaps even increase their support for their illicit programs,” Heinrichs said.
