SEOUL: South Korea on Wednesday suspended part of a 2018 military agreement with North Korea after it defied warnings from the United States and launched a spy satellite. The suspension of a clause in the agreement will see South Korea step up military surveillance along the heavily fortified border with the North.
North Korea said it placed its first spy satellite in orbit on Tuesday. Photographs in state media showed what appeared to be leader Kim Jong Un watching the fiery launch of a rocket from a base.
Kim was later briefed on the satellite’s operations at the control centre of the space agency in Pyongyang and viewed images taken above the US Pacific territory of Guam of US military installations, including the Andersen Air Force Base, the North’s KCNA news agency said.
Kim stressed the need for more reconnaissance satellites on different orbits to give his armed forces “abundant valuable real-time information about the enemy and further promote their responsive posture”, it said.
The satellite would begin its reconnaissance mission on December 1, after adjustments, KCNA said.
South Korea’s military said North Korea’s military reconnaissance satellite was believed to have entered orbit, but it would take time to assess whether it was operating normally.
Earlier, the Pentagon said the US military was assessing whether the launch was a success. US National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson called the launch “a brazen violation of multiple UN Security Council resolutions”.
Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer and astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said that US Space Force data had catalogued two new objects in an orbital plane consistent with the launch from North Korea at the time stated by the North.
“I conclude the objects are the spy satellite and the rocket upper stage,” he said.
However, South Korea’s Defence Minister Shin Won-sik said the North “exaggerated” by saying Kim had viewed images of US military installations at Guam, and that the satellite would only begin reconnaissance on December 1, in a radio interview on Wednesday.
“Even if it enters normal orbit, it takes a considerable time to carry out normal reconnaissance. Kim Jong Un was so happy that he seemed to go a little too far... Taking photos of Guam cannot be done on the first day, if you have any knowledge of satellites,” Shin said, according to Yonhap.
Shin said it will take at least until the weekend to tell whether the satellite is functioning.
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, in Britain on a state visit, approved the suspension of part of the agreement with North Korea. Yoon earlier led a National Security Council meeting with ministers and the intelligence chief by video link.
The pact between North and South Korea, known as the Comprehensive Military Agreement and aimed at de-escalating tension between them, was signed at a 2018 summit between then South Korean President Moon Jae-in and the North’s Kim.
Critics have said the pact weakened South Korea’s ability to monitor the North’s near the border while North Korea had violated the agreement.
South Korea said it was suspending a clause in the agreement and resuming aerial surveillance near the border.
The US nuclear-powered submarine USS Santa Fe docked at a South Korean port on Wednesday, a day after the Carl Vinson aircraft carrier arrived in a show of force in response to North Korea’s nuclear and missile programmes.
Visiting the carrier, South Korea’s Defence Minister Shin Won-sik said maritime exercises with the United States and Japan were planned to show their “strong will” to respond to any North Korean provocation, his office said. — Reuters
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