An anticipated
missile launch by North Korea failed today when the country fired the
long-range test rocket in defiance of U.N. Security Council resolutions and an
agreement with the United States.
The 90-ton rocket
launched with a larger than anticipated flare. But U.S. officials said that the
missile is believed to have crashed into the sea.
It was launched
from the Sohae Satellite Launching Station in the northern part of the country,
near North Korea's border with China.
Anticipation of the
missile launch began when the Communist nation had announced a five-day window
for launching a satellite, which began on Thursday.
The show of muscle
put the region on edge, but Donald Gregg, former U.S. Ambassador to South Korea
from 1989-1993 and an ABC News consultant, said he believed it was new leader
Kim Jong Un's way of asserting his power.
"The main
audience for this missile is internal not external," Gregg said.
"This is [Kim Jong Un's] way of demonstrating to the people of North Korea
he is in charge and his country is capable of high tech things. It is a
manifestation of his power."
North Korea claimed
the planned rocket launch was just a satellite called Shining Star, which was
being launched into orbit to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of
the regime's founder, Kim Il Sung.
Experts did not
doubt the possibility of a satellite being attached to the rocket, but feel the
satellite is a cover to test a long-range missile.
A nuclear test may soon follow. Large amounts of dirt and ground
cover are being moved at one of North Korea's nuclear sites, which experts
believe indicates the North Koreans plan to test a nuclear device. Even more
alarming is that officials believe that, unlike the first two nuclear tests
North Korea conducted with plutonium, this one could be a uranium device, which
would indicate a secret uranium production facility.
Gregg said the U.S.
likely would not be a direct target of a potentially nuclear North Korea.
"The North
Korea nuclear capability is not ever designed to be used against us. They know
anything used against us would result in a catastrophic response," he
said.
The rocket launch
defies two United Nations Security Council resolutions that prohibit North
Korea from testing ballistics missiles. It also breaks a promise North Korean
leaders made to U.S. leaders in Beijing at the end of February.
The regime had
promised to suspend nuclear missile tests, uranium enrichment and long-range
missile launches in exchange for food aid from the United States.
On Tuesday, Jay
Carney, the White House press secretary, said the launch of a rocket would
hinder the promised aid.
"It's
impossible to imagine that we would be able to follow through [and] provide the
nutritional assistance that we had planned on providing, given what would be a
flagrant violation of North Korea's basic international obligations,"
Carney said.
Gregg said that
given North Korea's history of honoring important events in its regime with
extravagant displays of propaganda, the U.S. should have anticipated the
country would do something to honor founder Kim Il Sung's birthday.
"It's
unfortunate the timing is how it is," he said, adding that he hoped the
U.S. would send an envoy to North Korea to work on building a dialogue.
"The obstacle
to that is domestically here. The Republicans would be all over anything like
that as appeasement," he said. " For Obama to do this in an election
year is unlikely."
The rocket launch
is the first under Kim Jong Un. The regime's leader, who is believed to be 29
years old, assumed party leadership in January of this year, weeks after the
death of his father.