North Korea to Launch Satellites to Monitor US, Its Allies

By Staff, Agencies

North Korea will launch a number of reconnaissance satellites in coming years to provide real-time information on military actions by the United States and its allies, state media on Thursday reported leader Kim Jong Un as saying.

While inspecting North Korea's National Aerospace Development Administration, Kim said "a lot" of military reconnaissance satellites would be put into sun-synchronous polar orbit in the period of a five-year plan announced last year, state news agency KCNA reported.

"He noted that the purpose of developing and operating the military reconnaissance satellite is to provide the armed forces of the DPRK with real-time information on military actions against it by the aggression troops of the US imperialism and its vassal forces in South Korea, Japan and the Pacific," the news agency said.

North Korea says it conducted two tests of satellite systems on Feb. 27 and March 5. Authorities in South Korea, Japan, and the United States says the tests involved launches of ballistic missiles.

The launches drew international condemnation and the US military said on Thursday it had increased surveillance and reconnaissance collection in the Yellow Sea.

The United States also said it had heightened its ballistic missile defense readiness after a "significant increase" in North Korean missile tests.

Kim defended the satellite work as not only about gathering information but protecting North Korea's sovereignty and national interests, exercising its legitimate rights to self-defense, and elevating national prestige, KCNA reported.

"He stressed that this urgent project for perfecting the country's war preparedness capacity by improving our state's war deterrent is the supreme revolutionary task, a political and military priority task to which our Party and government attach the most importance," KCNA said.

The United States and its allies have condemned previous North Korean space launches as violations of UN Security Council resolutions that have imposed sanctions on North Korea over its nuclear and missile programs.

North Korea has not tested a nuclear weapon or its long-range intercontinental ballistic missiles [ICBMs] since 2017, but has suggested in could resume such tests because talks with the United States are stalled.

Its latest flurry of missile launches could be groundwork for a return to ICBM and nuclear bomb tests this year, the US Directorate of National Intelligence [DNI] said in its annual Worldwide Threat Assessment released this week.

A satellite launched into orbit would be the first since 2016.