North Korea’s Failed Launch: The Aftermath

As is being widely reported, North Korea’s satellite launch failed early Friday morning with the rocket beaking up over the ocean a short time into the flight. NORAD has confirmed the launch and the break-up of the rocket.

Despite the failure, the attempt is still being condemned. The White House issued the following statement:

The White House

Office of the Press Secretary
For Immediate Release
April 12, 2012
Statement by the Press Secretary on North Korea’s Missile Launch

Despite the failure of its attempted missile launch, North Korea’s provocative action threatens regional security, violates international law and contravenes its own recent commitments. While this action is not surprising given North Korea’s pattern of aggressive behavior, any missile activity by North Korea is of concern to the international community. The United States remains vigilant in the face of North Korean provocations, and is fully committed to the security of our allies in the region.

The President has been clear that he is prepared to engage constructively with North Korea. However, he has also insisted that North Korea live up to its own commitments, adhere to its international obligations and deal peacefully with its neighbors.

North Korea is only further isolating itself by engaging in provocative acts, and is wasting its money on weapons and propaganda displays while the North Korean people go hungry. North Korea’s long-standing development of missiles and pursuit of nuclear weapons have not brought it security – and never will. North Korea will only show strength and find security by abiding by international law, living up to its obligations, and by working to feed its citizens, to educate its children, and to win the trust of its neighbors

Later Ben Rhodes, Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications, spoke about the launch during a White House press briefing:

Q Could you talk a little bit about the North Korea rocket — even though it failed, does the fact that they even tried suggest that the President’s attempt to engage North Korea was itself a failure?

MR. RHODES: Well, absolutely not. I’d say a number of things. First of all, what this administration has done is broken the cycle of rewarding provocative actions by the North Koreans that we’ve seen in the past.

Under the previous administration, for instance, there was a substantial amount of assistance provided to North Korea. North Korea was removed from the terrorism list, even as they continued to engage in provocative actions. Under our administration we have not provided any assistance to North Korea. When this new regime took power after the death of Kim Jong-il, we had discussions with them about potentially an agreement where they would freeze their enrichment activities and take some other steps towards denuclearization, and that we as a part of that might provide food assistance.

But we also made clear that we could not go forward with that type of agreement if they could not keep their commitments, and their efforts to launch a missile clearly demonstrates that they could not be trusted to keep their commitments. Therefore, we’re not going forward with an agreement to provide them with any assistance. We have not provided them with any assistance, and it’s impossible to see how we can move forward with the February agreement given the action that they’ve taken.

It is notable that we’ve also put the most unprecedented sanctions in place against the North Koreans that we’ve seen to date. Those sanctions target in part their proliferation activities, their ballistic missile capabilities. And again, what we saw yesterday was a launch that did not meet its objective and that failed shortly after takeoff.

Q So what’s next?

MR. RHODES: Well, today we will — I think you’ve seen, first of all, universal condemnation of North Korea’s provocative action, including the United States and our allies — South Korea and Japan, but also including China and Russia. And today, I think we’ll begin consultations about — at the U.N. Security Council about how to deliver a message to the North Koreans that the international community rejects this launch and is prepared to take additional steps, particularly if North Korea continues to go down the road of taking provocative actions.

Q What would those additional steps be?

MR. RHODES: Well, we already have the very tough sanctions regime in place. I think the North Koreans have to hear a universal message of condemnation from the international community. They have to understand that they will only deepen their isolation by going down this road. They have to understand from us that any agreement would be impossible to move forward with as it relates to food assistance, given the action that they have taken. So there are already consequences as a result of their missile launch.

If they continue to take additional provocative actions, we, of course, have to continue to look at ways in which we could tighten sanctions on the North Koreans and take additional steps to apply pressure on the regime.

Q Are you worried about a nuclear launch?

MR. RHODES: In the past, the North Koreans have tended to pursue patterns of provocative actions to include missile launches, nuclear tests as they undertook in 2006, 2009. And so we’re certainly concerned about the pattern of provocative behavior that the North Koreans engage in. What we want to make clear to them is that each step that they take in terms of provocations will only lead to a deeper isolation, increase consequences. And frankly, that’s not just a message they’re hearing from us, they’re hearing it from the Chinese and the Russians as well.

Q Does North Korea need food aid —

MR. RHODES: Absolutely, and the message that we’ve been delivering is that North Korea is wasting its money on these weapons as many of their people starve and as their economy is one of the most backward in the world. What they could have is a better relationship with the international community that allows them to receive assistance, allows their people to have — live a better life. Instead, they’ve chosen to waste money on missile technologies and provocative actions.

And frankly, as we saw yesterday, have not even been able to advance that capability. We believe that the better choice for the North Korean people would be for their government to stop this type of provocative behavior and to engage the international community in a way that gives us confidence that they’re going to abandon their nuclear weapons program and their ballistic missile program.

Q Ben — the North Korean people are really being held hostage in this situation. We send food aid to regimes in places all over the world where we have profound disagreements with those governments. Why is it that we feel appropriate here to use food aid as a lever to try to get the government to do what we want?

MR. RHODES: Well, I actually — the reason why is because we cannot trust the government to provide that assistance to the people who need it. It’s the North Korean government that is holding its own people hostage because, frankly, we can’t trust them to implement an agreement and to make sure that the assistance gets to those who need it if they show that they’re willing to spend their own resources in the pursuit of a ballistic missile program, and that they’re not going to live up to the agreements that they’ve made. So if we can’t trust the North Korea government to honor its own commitments, we cannot have the confidence that we need that that agreement would be implemented.

But again, I think it’s absolutely true that the North Korean people are the ones who’ve suffered, and the North Korea government is trying to put on this propaganda show over the course of the last several days, inviting journalists in to take a look at this particular rocket launch. Again, what they haven’t — is the fact that they have an economy that is desperately in need of integration with the world and that they have people, again, who would be far better off if the government spent their resources on investing in North Korean citizenry and not on these types of technologies.

North Korea Tech reports that North Korea, in a rare move, used a special news broadcast to inform its citizenry of the failure:

yongyang, April 13 (KCNA) — The DPRK launched its first application satellite Kwangmyongsong-3 at the Sohae Satellite Launching Station in Cholsan County, North Phyongan Province at 07:38:55 a.m. on Friday. The earth observation satellite failed to enter its preset orbit. Scientists, technicians and experts are now looking into the cause of the failure.

North Korea Tech also points to an English language broadcast on the Voice of Korea radio station announcing the failure.

The U.N. Security Council has taken up the matter of the launch and condemned it:

Security Council strongly condemns DPR Korea’s satellite launch attempt
[Amb. Susan Rice of the United States, presides over Security Council meeting on the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). UN Photo/JC McIlwaine]
Amb. Susan Rice of the United States, presides over Security Council meeting on the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). UN Photo/JC McIlwaine
16 April 2012 –
The Security Council today strongly condemned the attempted launch by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) of a so-called ‘application satellite,’ stressing that last week’s action, as well as any other use of ballistic missile technology, is a serious violation of the United Nations resolutions.

“The Security Council deplores that such a launch has caused grave security concerns in the region,” the Council said in a presidential statement following Friday’s launch of the satellite, which reportedly rose for less than two minutes before exploding and plunging into the sea near the Korean peninsula.

The Council demanded that the DPRK refrain from any further launches using ballistic missile technology and to comply with previous resolutions by suspending all activities related to the country’s ballistic missile programme. Pyongyang must also re-establish its commitments to a moratorium on missile launches, the Council stressed.

Ambassador Susan Rice of the United States, which holds the Council’s presidency this month, highlighted to reporters that the presidential statement also provides for new sanctions.

“The Security Council directed its North Korea Sanctions Committee to designate additional North Korean entities, including companies, to be subject to an asset freeze, as well as to identify additional proliferation-sensitive technology to be banned for transfer to or from North Korea.

“The Committee will also take several other actions to improve enforcement of existing sanctions,” said Ms. Rice.

The Council demanded that the DPRK immediately comply fully with its obligations under previous resolutions, including abandoning all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programmes in a complete, verifiable and irreversible manner; immediately ceasing all related activities; and refraining from conducting any further launches that use ballistic missile technology, nuclear tests or any further provocation.

It called on all Member States to implement fully their obligations pursuant to the Council’s resolutions on DPRK.

“The Security Council expresses its determination to take action accordingly in the event of a further DPRK launch or nuclear test,” said the statement.