North Korea launches rocket after satellite warning

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World
A TV screen displays a warning after the Japanese government issued an emergency warning to residents of Okinawa, saying a missile had been launched from North KoreaReuters

North Korea has launched a rocket shortly after announcing it planned to send up its first space satellite, sources in Japan and South Korea say.

Japan issued a warning to residents in the southern prefecture of Okinawa but later reported there was no danger of the rocket hitting its territory.

The rocket has since come down, possibly after breaking up in the air.

North Korea said earlier it planned to launch a satellite by 11 June to monitor US military activities.

Japan said it was ready to shoot down anything that threatened its territory.

There was chaos and confusion in Seoul, the South Korean capital, on Wednesday morning local time, as people awoke to the sound of an air raid siren and an emergency message telling them to prepare for an evacuation – only to be told 20 minutes later it had been sent in error.

The stakes are high on the Korean Peninsula, where tensions have existed between the two countries for 70 years, and this false alarm could seriously damage people’s trust in the alert system.

North Korea poses a threat to South Korea, and if there is an alert in the future one question being asked is whether it will be taken seriously, or brushed off as another mistake.

South Korea’s military said the projectile might have broken up in mid-air or crashed after it vanished from radar early, adding that analysis was being conducted, Yonhap news agency reports.

On Tuesday, Ri Pyong Chol, vice chairman of North Korea’s ruling party’s central military commission, announced the launch plan, saying it was in response to “reckless military acts” by the US and South Korea.

He accused the countries of “openly revealing their reckless ambition for aggression”.

Before Wednesday’s launch, the US state department said any North Korean launch that used ballistic missile technology would violate multiple UN Security Council resolutions.

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