North Korea said its attempt to launch a new military reconnaissance satellite ended in failure on Monday when a newly developed rocket engine exploded in flight.
The attempt came just hours after Pyongyang warned it would try to launch a satellite by June 4, in what would have been its second spy satellite in orbit.
Instead, the launch became the nuclear-armed North’s latest failure, following two other major crashes last year. It successfully launched its first spy satellite into orbit in November.
“The launch of the new satellite carrier rocket failed when it exploded in the air during the flight of the first stage,” the deputy director general of North Korea’s National Aerospace Technology Administration said in a state media report.
An initial analysis suggested the cause was a newly developed liquid-fuel rocket engine, but other possible causes were also being investigated, the report said.
Officials in South Korea and Japan had previously reported that the launch appeared to have failed.
North Korea fired the projectile on a southern path off its west coast around 10:44 p.m., the South’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said.
However, JCS said it discovered a large amount of debris from the rocket in the sea just two minutes after launch.
The object launched by North Korea disappeared over the Yellow Sea, Japanese Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi told reporters, adding that the government believes nothing entered space.
“These launches violate relevant Security Council resolutions and pose a serious matter for the security of our people,” Hayashi said.
Public broadcaster NHK showed a video of what appeared to be an orange dot flying into the night sky and then bursting into flames in an area close to the China-North Korea border.
A Defense Ministry official told reporters that the color of the flames in the footage indicates that liquid fuel may be burning, but the details are currently being analyzed, NHK reported.
The launch appeared to originate from Dongchang-ri, a northwestern part of the country that is home to North Korea’s main spaceflight center, JCS said.
The Japanese government on Monday issued an emergency warning to residents of the south to take cover from the possible threat of a North Korean missile, before withdrawing the warning and saying the missile was not expected to fly over Japanese territory.
Japan said via its J-Alert public address system that North Korea appeared to have fired a missile, sending the warning to residents of the southern Okinawa prefecture.
The launch was the nuclear-armed North’s attempt to put a second spy satellite into orbit. After several failed attempts that ended with the missiles crashing, North Korea successfully placed its first such satellite into orbit in November.
The North’s first bid to launch the new Chollima-1 satellite rocket on May 31 last year ended after a second-stage failure. State media blamed the setback on an unstable and unreliable new engine system and fuel.
After the launch attempt in May, South Korea pulled the satellite’s wreckage from the sea, saying an analysis showed it had no meaningful use as a reconnaissance platform.
Another attempt in August also ended in failure, with the rocket booster stages experiencing problems, causing the payload to crash into the sea.
North Korean space authorities had described the failure in August, after the rocket booster encountered a problem with the third stage, as “not a major problem” in terms of the overall reliability of the rocket system.
In February, US space experts said North Korea’s first spy satellite, dubbed Malligyong-1, was “alive” after detecting changes in its orbit that suggested Pyongyang was successfully monitoring the spacecraft – although its capabilities remain unknown.
North Korean state media reported that the satellite had broadcast photos of the Pentagon and the White House, among other places, but did not release any of the images.
The successful launch in November was the first after North Korean leader Kim Jong Un made a rare trip abroad in September to visit Russia’s most modern space launch center, where President Vladimir Putin pledged to help Pyongyang build satellites.
Neither country has elaborated on the extent of that future aid, which could violate United Nations Security Council resolutions against North Korea.
Russian experts have visited North Korea to help with its satellite and space rocket program, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported, citing an unnamed South Korean senior defense official.
Pyongyang has said it needs a military reconnaissance satellite to improve monitoring of US and South Korean military activities.
