NK says its satellite failed to enter orbit

North Korea said Friday its Kwangmyongsong-3 satellite failed to enter orbit after its launch aboard a long-range rocket.

The North said its “scientists, technicians and experts are now looking into the cause of the failure,” the North’s official Korean Central News Agency said in a brief dispatch, without elaborating.

Seoul’s defense ministry said the Unha-3 rocket took off from the Dongchang-ri launch site in the North’s northwest at 7:39 a.m., but burst into 20 pieces after flying about one or two minutes.

The North’s official admission of a failed rocket launch came more than four hours after the launch.

South Korea and the U.S. condemned the rocket launch as a provocative threat to peace and stability in Northeast Asia and pressed the North to take full responsibility for any repercussions.

The South Korean defense ministry said its military was searching the area to try to recover rocket fragments. The North has threatened to immediately and mercilessly retaliate against any country that intercepts a North Korean rocket booster or collects the rocket debris.

The failure came as North Korea’s rubber-stamp parliament was to hold a session on Friday, the latest in a string of political events apparently aimed at consolidating new leader Kim Jong-un’s power.

On Wednesday, Kim assumed the top post of the country’s ruling Workers’ Party in a special session. He was named the party’s first secretary and also elected as a member of the Presidium of the Political Bureau of the party’s Central Committee.

There is no word yet in the KCNA whether the North’s Supreme People’s Assembly has convened. <Korea Times>

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