Kim Yo-jong, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s sister, said her country would soon put a military spy satellite into orbit and promised Pyongyang would increase its military surveillance capabilities, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported yesterday.
“It is certain that [North Korea’s] military reconnaissance satellite will be correctly put on space orbit in the near future and start its mission,” Kim Yo-jong, a powerful government official in her own right, said in an English-language statement carried by the KCNA.
Her remarks came after the failure of a North Korean satellite launch on Wednesday.
Photo: AP
It might take weeks or more to resolve the problems that caused the rocket’s failure, a South Korean lawmaker said on Wednesday, citing the South’s intelligence agency.
In a rare admission of a North Korean setback, the KCNA reported that the Chollima-1 rocket, carrying a military reconnaissance satellite known as “Malligyong-1,” crashed into the sea after an accident.
The KCNA also published yesterday images of what it said was the new rocket lifting off from a coastal launch pad. The white-and-gray rocket had a bulbous nose, apparently for carrying a satellite or other cargo.
Photo: AP
The photographs confirmed that the rocket is a new design, said Ankit Panda of the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
“The launch used the new coastal launch pad they’ve built at Tongchang-ri, so we might see a larger space launch vehicle use the traditional gantry that has seen some work recently,” he added.
US-based monitors, including 38 North and the Center for Strategic and International Studies, reported that commercial satellite imagery showed significant activity at the main pad after Wednesday’s launch.
The South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff said it could be presumed from North Korea’s state media photos that the rocket was launched from a new pad.
South Korea has dispatched ships and aircraft to recover parts from the space launch vehicle, the military said.
Wednesday’s launch was widely criticized, including by South Korea, Japan and the US.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said any launch by Pyongyang using ballistic missile technology contravenes UN Security Council resolutions, a spokesperson said.
In her statement, Kim Yo-jong said the criticisms of the launch were “self-contradiction,” as the US and other countries have already launched “thousands of satellites.”
“The US is a group of gangsters who would claim that even if the DPRK launches a satellite ... it is illegal and threatening,” she said, using the initials of North Korea’s official name.
In a separate statement carried by the KCNA, North Korean Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Kim Son-gyong criticized US-led military drills in the region including a multinational anti-proliferation naval drill.
In the sweltering streets of Jakarta, buskers carry towering, hollow puppets and pass around a bucket for donations. Now, they fear becoming outlaws. City authorities said they would crack down on use of the sacred ondel-ondel puppets, which can stand as tall as a truck, and they are drafting legislation to remove what they view as a street nuisance. Performances featuring the puppets — originally used by Jakarta’s Betawi people to ward off evil spirits — would be allowed only at set events. The ban could leave many ondel-ondel buskers in Jakarta jobless. “I am confused and anxious. I fear getting raided or even
Kemal Ozdemir looked up at the bare peaks of Mount Cilo in Turkey’s Kurdish majority southeast. “There were glaciers 10 years ago,” he recalled under a cloudless sky. A mountain guide for 15 years, Ozdemir then turned toward the torrent carrying dozens of blocks of ice below a slope covered with grass and rocks — a sign of glacier loss being exacerbated by global warming. “You can see that there are quite a few pieces of glacier in the water right now ... the reason why the waterfalls flow lushly actually shows us how fast the ice is melting,” he said.
Eleven people, including a former minister, were arrested in Serbia on Friday over a train station disaster in which 16 people died. The concrete canopy of the newly renovated station in the northern city of Novi Sad collapsed on Nov. 1, 2024 in a disaster widely blamed on corruption and poor oversight. It sparked a wave of student-led protests and led to the resignation of then-Serbian prime minister Milos Vucevic and the fall of his government. The public prosecutor’s office in Novi Sad opened an investigation into the accident and deaths. In February, the public prosecutor’s office for organized crime opened another probe into
RISING RACISM: A Japanese group called on China to assure safety in the country, while the Chinese embassy in Tokyo urged action against a ‘surge in xenophobia’ A Japanese woman living in China was attacked and injured by a man in a subway station in Suzhou, China, Japanese media said, hours after two Chinese men were seriously injured in violence in Tokyo. The attacks on Thursday raised concern about xenophobic sentiment in China and Japan that have been blamed for assaults in both countries. It was the third attack involving Japanese living in China since last year. In the two previous cases in China, Chinese authorities have insisted they were isolated incidents. Japanese broadcaster NHK did not identify the woman injured in Suzhou by name, but, citing the Japanese
RSS