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NORTH KOREA ROCKET WOULD BREAK UN RESOLUTION, YU SAYS

Michael Heath and Heejin Koo

Bloomberg, March 11, 2009

South Korea said any North Korean rocket launch would violate a United Nations resolution whether the communist state fires a ballistic missile or sends a satellite into space.

“The two operate on very similar technology,” South Korean Foreign Minister Yu Myung Hwan said in an interview after speaking at a seminar in Seoul today. He was responding to comments by the director of U.S. National Intelligence, who told lawmakers yesterday that North Korea is planning a space launch.

U.S. and South Korean officials have said there are signs North Korea is planning to test a Taepodong-2 missile that is technically capable of reaching Alaska. Kim Jong Il’s regime has denied planning such a test, saying Feb. 24 it intends to launch a communications satellite as part of a peaceful space project.

“The North Koreans announced that they were going to do a space launch and I believe that that’s what they intend,” Dennis Blair told the Senate Armed Services Committee in Washington yesterday. “I could be wrong, but that would be my estimate.”

The technology for a space launch “is indistinguishable from an intercontinental ballistic missile,” Blair said, according to a government transcript. If the “three-stage space-launch vehicle works” it could technically reach the U.S. mainland, he added.

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