For the new North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, his government’s failure to put a satellite into orbit was a billion-dollar humiliation. Kim wanted to mark his ascension to top political power— timed to the country’s biggest holiday in decades, the hundredth birthday of his grandfather and founder of North Korea, Kim Il-sung— with fireworks, real and symbolic. And the launching of its Kwangmyongsong, or Bright Shining Star, satellite was the marquee event.
But the satellite disintegrated in a different kind of fireworks. The rocket carrying it exploded in midair about two minutes after the liftoff, according to American, South Korean, and Japanese officials. The rocket and satellite, which cost the impoverished country an estimated $450 million to build, according to South Korean government estimates, splintered into many pieces and plunged into the gray blue waters of the Yellow Sea.
The launching drew swift international condemnation; the United Nations Security Council has prohibited such tests by North Korea, for fear they are pretexts for testing missiles that could eventually deliver nuclear bombs. But the failure was at least as worrisome, injecting a new note of unpredictability at an already uncertain time, with Kim Jong-un still trying to consolidate power just months after his father’s death.
Most analysts believe the failed test will encourage the military, with Kim as its official leader, to take some provocative action to bolster its credentials, increasing the likelihood of a nuclear test that the country appeared to already be preparing. But the recent machinations over a deal with the United States, in which the North made an agreement for food aid, then reneged quickly, have at least raised the prospect that a power struggle was already under way, raising questions about how the country will move forward.
At the United Nations, the Security Council met in emergency consultations, but took no action to punish the North for the launching. The council said in a statement that it “deplored this launch” as a violation of two Security Council resolutions, 1718 and 1874, which prohibit North Korea from conducting such activity and penalize the country with an arms embargo and other sanctions. The statement said the council would “continue consultations on an appropriate response, in accordance with its responsibilities, given the urgency of the matter.”
Briefing reporters afterward, Susan E. Rice, the American ambassador and rotating council president, declined to specify whether a further response would include new sanctions on North Korea, but she said “we think it’s important that the Council respond credibly. And we will be working in that direction.”
Despite the embarrassing setback, Kim was installed just hours after the launching as the new head of the national defense commission, his country’s highest state agency, during a parliamentary meeting in the country’s capital, Pyongyang. That was the last among the top military, party, and state posts that have been transferred to him from his father, Kim Jong-il, who died in December.
For the launching, and probably other future tests, North Korea has recently completed a brand new launch site near the western border with China, at a cost of $400 million according the South Korean estimates.
The rocket reached only about 94 miles in altitude, far less than the 310 miles required to place a satellite into orbit and, as North Korean officials said, to present “a gift” to the closest the North Koreans had to a heavenly God: Kim Il-sung.
In a socialist country steeped in the traditions of a Confucian dynasty, it is of paramount import for the young leader, Kim, to embellish his rise to power with events that showed his loyalty to his forefathers while demonstrating his own abilities to lead, analysts said. Both Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il, ever fearful of an attack from the United States, had dreamed of North Korea having a functioning nuclear deterrent; American intelligence officials already believe the country has the fuel for several bombs, but they do not yet believe it has figured out how to deliver those warheads on missiles that could threaten the West.
“The main drive behind the rocket launch was domestic politics,” said Kim Yong-hyun, a professor of North Korean studies at Dongguk University in Seoul and a visiting scholar at Johns Hopkins University’s Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies in Washington. “They wanted to introduce the Kim Jong-un era with a big celebratory bang. They wanted to make their people believe that they were now a powerful nation.”
The government, more famous for shutting off its country from the outside world, had intensified the pre-launch publicity. It trumpeted the satellite program as a key achievement of Kim, claiming that he had personally directed a previous satellite launching in 2009. It also invited foreign journalists to visit the launch site and command and control center.
The result was more than a loss of face. North Korea lost 240,000 tons of food aid, estimated to be worth $200 million, that Washington had promised in February, but then said it was canceling because of the announced rocket launch.
South Korea did not lose the opportunity to jab at the North’s hurt pride. “It is very regrettable that North Korea is spending enormous resources on developing nuclear and missile capabilities while ignoring the urgent welfare issue of the North Korean people such as chronic food shortages,” said its foreign minister, Kim Sung-hwan.
“It is hard to imagine a greater humiliation,” a North Korea expert, Marcus Noland, said on his blog at the website of the Peter G. Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington. “The North Koreans have managed in a single stroke to not only defy the UN Security Council, the United States, and even their patron China, but also demonstrate ineptitude,” Noland said. “Some of the scientists and engineers associated with the launch are likely facing death or the gulag as scapegoats for this embarrassment.”
Launch failures are not uncommon even for rich and technologically advanced nations. But in the myth-filled world of the Kim family, there is little room for failure. The North’s two previous attempts to put a satellite into orbit failed, according to American officials, but both times the government insisted that the satellites were circling the earth and broadcasting songs about its great leaders.
This time, it had to admit to failure, analysts said, because of the presence of so many foreign reporters and because neighboring countries were watching the much-anticipated launch more closely than ever. On Friday, the North’s Central TV interrupted its regular programs to report the news. While this indicated that the government was not withholding the political embarrassment from its people, foreign reporters in Pyongyang said four long hours of eerie silence passed before the government admitted to its abortive launch.
Still, analysts warned, it was not a time for the North’s critics to gloat. The North’s admission “suggests that, although a major setback to North Korea’s plan to celebrate Kim Il-sung’s centenary with a demonstration of hi-tech prowess, it is not such an embarrassment that they would try to deny it,” said John Delury, a North Korea expert at Yonsei University in Seoul. “There will be more propaganda opportunities over the weekend that perhaps can make up for the satellite’s fizzle.”
One question that the failed launch raises is: where will the new leadership turn now for a much needed legitimization of Kim’s dynastic succession?
“Now it has become more certain that North Korea will raise tensions and go ahead with its third nuclear test to recover some of its lost face, especially if the United States pushes for more sanctions,” said Cheong Seong-chang, an analyst at Sejong Institute.
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