Kim Jong Un at a meeting of the ruling Workers’ Party’s Central Military Commission last week. Photo / AP
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un says his country has built its first military spy satellite and he plans to launch it on an undisclosed date, state media reported today.
Previous missile and rocket tests have demonstrated that North Korea can send satellites into space, but many experts question whether it has cameras sophisticated enough to use for spying from a satellite because only low-resolution images were released after past launches.
During his visit to the country’s aerospace agency, Kim said having an operational military reconnaissance satellite was crucial for North Korea to effectively use its nuclear-capable missiles.
He cited what he described as serious security threats posed by “the most hostile rhetoric and explicit action” by the United States and South Korea this year, according to the official Korean Central News Agency. He likely hopes to pressure his rivals on issues including joint military drills and international economic sanctions on North Korea.
Kim said “the military reconnaissance satellite No 1″ had already been built and ordered officials to speed up preparations for its launch. KCNA reported him saying North Korea must launch several satellites to establish an intelligence-gathering capability.
North Korea has said continuing weapons tests, including its first test-launch last week of a solid-fuelled intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) designed to strike the US mainland, are a response to joint military exercises between the US and its regional allies South Korea and Japan. North Korea has carried out about 100 missile tests since the start of last year, including about 30 this year.
The US and South Korean militaries have been expanding combined drills in response to North Korea’s growing nuclear threats. This week the allies began a 12-day aerial exercise involving more than 100 warplanes and staged a one-day naval missile defence exercise with Japan.
Spy satellites are among an array of weapons systems that Kim publicly vowed to develop during a ruling Workers’ Party conference in January 2021. He also pledged to build other weapons systems including solid-propellant ICBMs, nuclear-powered submarines, hyper-sonic missiles and multi-warhead missiles. North Korea has since conducted tests of such weapons, but it is not clear how close they are to being operational.
After North Korea launched a test satellite last December, it publicised black-and-white photos showing a space view of South Korean cities. Some civilian experts in South Korea said at the time the photos were too crude for surveillance purposes and that they were likely capable of recognising only big targets such as warships or military installations.
Kim’s sister and senior North Korean official Kim Yo Jong said the test satellite carried a commercial camera because there was no reason to use an expensive, high-resolution camera for a single-shot test.
Kim Jong Un said one of the objectives of its spy satellite was acquiring an ability to “use pre-emptive military force when the situation demands”.
Tuesday’s KCNA dispatch focused on US military assets such as aircraft carriers and long-range bombers that have been deployed in South Korea in recent months, but made no mention of possible targets in the mainland US. That could imply that North Korea intends to use its reconnaissance satellites to identify key targets in South Korea, including US military bases, in order to attack them with short-range missiles.
Kim Dong Yub, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul, said North Korea would probably inform international maritime and telecommunication authorities of its launch plans, sometime between May and September.
Putting a reconnaissance satellite into orbit would require a long-range rocket. The United Nations bans such launches by North Korea because it views them as cover for testing long-range ballistic missile technology.
North Korea placed its first and second Earth observation satellites into orbit in 2012 and 2016, but foreign experts say neither transmitted imagery back to North Korea. The UN issued sanctions over those launches.
North Korea has avoided fresh UN sanctions for its recent ballistic missile tests in 2022 and this year because UN Security Council permanent members Russia and China didn’t support tougher sanctions.