North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said Wednesday that the country’s first military spy satellite has been completed and that the launch has been approved.
The completion report comes about a week after Pyongyang launched what it claimed was a new solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missile, signalling a significant breakthrough in its banned weapons programs.
According to analysts, there is a significant technological overlap in the development of ICBMs and space launch capabilities.
Kim Jong instructed on Tuesday to “ensure that the military reconnaissance satellite No. 1 completed by April is launched on the scheduled date,” according to the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).
Kim Jong also urged staff to “firmly establish the satellite intelligence-gathering capability by deploying several reconnaissance satellites on different orbits in succession” during a visit to North Korea’s National Aerospace Development Administration on Tuesday.Â
Kim Jong was photographed touring the space agency with his daughter, according to state media. In some of the images, the items he was inspecting, as well as charts and other wall displays, were blurred.Â
One of Kim’s key defence projects for 2021 was the development of a military reconnaissance satellite.
On Tuesday, he stated that acquiring this reconnaissance technology was a “primary task that must be completed” due to what he described as threats and aggression from the United States and South Korea.
North Korea announced in December 2022 that it had completed an ‘important final-stage test’ for the development of a spy satellite, which it said it would complete by April of this year.
Experts in South Korea quickly questioned the results, claiming that the quality of the black-and-white images released by North Korea – purportedly taken from a satellite – was poor.
The launch date for the satellite has not been announced by Pyongyang, but Kim said on Tuesday that it would happen “at the planned date.”
According to An Chan-il, the director of the World Institute for North Korean Studies and a former defector, “it appears that the North will launch a symbolic satellite for the time being, and gradually upgrade it,” he told AFP.
Spying with North Korean technology will be challenging if China and Russia do not offer high-tech assistance.
Nonetheless, Yang Moo-jin, president of the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul, believes the latest announcement should be taken seriously.
According to him, the South is seriously threatened by North Korea’s reconnaissance satellites because they could be a key component in a nuclear pre-emptive strike.
North Korea declared itself an ‘irreversible’ nuclear power last year, effectively ruling out the possibility of denuclearisation talks.
As a result, Washington and Seoul have increased defence cooperation by staging joint military exercises involving advanced stealth jets and high-profile US strategic assets.
North Korea sees such exercises as drills for invasion and described them last week as ‘frantic’ drills simulating an all-out war against Pyongyang.
