SEOUL – North Korea’s reconnaissance satellite operation office has begun its mission as a military intelligence organisation, state news agency KCNA said on Dec 3.
The office, organised at the Pyongyang General Control Centre of the National Aerospace Technology Administration, started to discharge its mission on Dec 2 and will report acquired information to the reconnaissance bureau at the army and other major units, KCNA said.
North Korea says it successfully launched its first military spy satellite on Nov 21, transmitting photos of the White House, the Pentagon, American military bases and “target regions” in South Korea.
The move raised regional tensions and sparked fresh sanctions from the US, Australia, Japan and South Korea.
Pyongyang has not released any imagery from the satellite so far, leaving analysts and foreign governments to debate how capable the new satellite actually is.
In a separate article carried by KCNA on Dec 3, an unidentified North Korean military commentator said the South is to blame for the breakdown of their military confidence-building agreement, justifying its spy satellite launch as what other countries also do.
The article also argued that South Korea’s own, first military reconnaissance launch in December proved to be self-contradictory.
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) chairman Kim Myung-soo on Dec 2 made a visit to front-line units near the border with the North to assess readiness posture amid heightened tensions, the JCS said on Dec 3.
North Korean soldiers brought back heavy weapons into the Demilitarised Zone border and restored guard posts that the two countries had demolished, after Seoul suspended part of a 2018 military accord between the two Koreas in a protest over Pyongyang’s launch of the spy satellite.
On Dec 1, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carried South Korea’s first spy satellite into orbit from California’s Vandenberg Space Force Base.
South Korea has contracted the American company to launch a total of five spy satellites by 2025 in an effort to accelerate its goal of having a 24-hour watch over the Korean peninsula. REUTERS
