North Korea said it successfully placed its first spy satellite into orbit late Tuesday and vowed to launch several more in a "short span of time."
The country's official Korean Central News Agency said North Korean leader Kim Jong Un oversaw the launch from a site in Tongchang-ri on the west coast.
"The carrier rocket 'Chollima-1' flew normally along the preset flight track and accurately put the reconnaissance satellite 'Malligyong-1' on its orbit at 22:54:13, 705s after the launch," KCNA reported.
U.S. and South Korean officials have not publicly confirmed whether the satellite reached orbit but condemned the launch as a provocation that violates United Nations Security Council resolutions.
In response, South Korea also announced it would partially suspend a 2018 inter-Korean military agreement meant to reduce tensions along the border.
North Korea's launch was not a surprise. Earlier Tuesday, North Korea informed Japan that it planned to fire a satellite launch vehicle in the direction of the Yellow Sea and East China Sea during a nine-day window starting Wednesday.
However, the North's launch, which occurred just about an hour before that window was to begin, triggered brief shelter warnings in parts of southern Japan, before it was determined that the launch vehicle had splashed safely into the ocean.
Past failures
It was North Korea's third attempted spy satellite launch this year. Previous attempts, in May and August, ended in failure because of rocket problems.
Jeffrey Lewis, an expert on North Korea's nuclear program at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, said he could not independently confirm whether Pyongyang's latest attempt succeeded.
"But based on where we see the ionospheric disturbance it appears to have been 'more successful' than the previous two attempts," Lewis said on the social media website X, formerly Twitter.
If the satellite made it into orbit, the community of visual satellite observers will spot it, he added.
Military usefulness
Last year, North Korea said it planned to launch "a lot" of spy satellites into orbit to provide real-time information on what it called the "aggression troops" of the United States and its regional allies.
The significance of such developments is unclear. North Korea has not revealed how many spy satellites it intends to keep in orbit simultaneously. Analysts are also uncertain about the quality of the imagery they will produce.
After retrieving parts of a North Korean spy satellite and space launch vehicle that plunged into the sea in May, South Korea's military said it assessed that the device "had no military utility" as a reconnaissance satellite.
"However, I think even a satellite with rudimentary capabilities could still be a first step, or could modestly improve North Korea's situational awareness," said Tianran Xu, an analyst who focuses on Northeast Asian security and missile systems for the Vienna-based Open Nuclear Network. "And if this launch succeeds, it means this could be a beginning."
North Korea has placed at least two satellites into orbit – the latest in February 2016 – but neither are believed to be working. Pyongyang claimed those launches were part of its peaceful space development program.
The United States and its allies condemned those launches as thinly disguised tests of long-range missile technology. North Korea is banned from any ballistic missile activity under multiple United Nations Security Council resolutions.
Russian help
During a September meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Russia's Far East, Russian President Vladimir Putin appeared to confirm Moscow was helping Pyongyang build satellites.
However, the exact nature of any cooperation remains unclear, since it may be too early for North Korea to have incorporated much of the help, Xu said in an interview with VOA.
"Even if there is some substantial Russian aid coming – either in satellite technology, sensor technology, or in the launch vehicle itself – if it's that substantial, they may choose to use the knowledge … for their next launch," Xu added.
South Korea response
South Korea, which had repeatedly warned the North against moving ahead with the launch, announced it will resume reconnaissance and surveillance activities around the border. Such missions had been suspended under the 2018 Comprehensive Military Agreement (CMA) between Seoul and Pyongyang.
The agreement set up buffer zones and no-fly zones and banned other military activity along the inter-Korean border. But North Korea has repeatedly violated the agreement in recent years.
On Wednesday, South Korea's Cabinet approved the partial suspension of the CMA, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported.
"The fate of the rest of the agreement will depend on North Korea's future actions," said the statement by the South Korean National Security Council.
After it was signed, U.S. military officials in South Korea were publicly supportive of the CMA, saying it was helping to reduce tensions along the border during a period of sensitive diplomacy.
That diplomacy was short-lived, though, and North Korea soon intensified its weapons tests, verbal threats and cross-border provocations.
Some analysts fear that a unilateral South Korea withdrawal from the agreement could lead to misunderstandings and miscalculations, increasing the chances of a clash with North Korea.
But any abrogation of the CMA "will be the result of deteriorated inter-Korea relations and escalatory steps by North Korea, not the cause," said Sydney Seiler, who until earlier this year was the National Intelligence Officer for North Korea in the U.S. National Intelligence Council.
"The only question left for Seoul in such a scenario is how to manage the messaging and any domestic political blow-back," Seiler, who is now a senior adviser with the Center for Strategic & International Studies, told VOA.
North Korea has not publicly responded to South Korea's decision to suspend parts of the CMA.
Earlier Tuesday, a North Korean state media editorial defended the country's space program as a "war deterrent" that will help promote a "strategic security balance" in the region.
The North Korean editorial, written by an aerospace technology researcher, slammed South Korea's upcoming launch as an aggressive and "extremely dangerous" military provocation.
Later this month, South Korea plans to launch its first domestically built spy satellite, using a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
