South conducts air drills after North warns of coming satellite launch

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South conducts air drills after North warns of coming satellite launch

Published: 27 May. 2024, 19:11

MICHAEL LEE
lee.junhyuk@joongang.co.kr

F-35A stealth fighters and a F-50 light fighter from the South Korean Air Force conduct a drill south of a no-fly zone near the inter-Korean border on Monday, hours after the North informed Japan that it plans to launch a satellite into orbit sometime before June 4. [JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF]

South Korea’s Air Force conducted drills near the inter-Korean border on Monday after the North informed Japan that it plans to launch a satellite sometime before June 4, according to Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS).

The JCS said in a press statement that 20 fighter jets, including F-35A stealth fighters, conducted a strike package exercise just south of a no fly-zone near the inter-Korean border at 1 p.m. “to demonstrate [South Korea’s] resolve and ability to punish immediately, forcefully and determinedly if the enemy commits a provocation.”

The JCS also appeared to suggest the exercise was South Korea’s warning to the North against launching another satellite into orbit.

“North Korea’s planned military spy satellite launch is a provocation that violates United Nations Security Council resolutions, and our military will take steps to demonstrate our powerful capabilities and determination,” JCS spokesman Col. Lee Sung-jun told reporters at a regular press briefing.

Although the North is formally barred from conducting any launches involving ballistic missile technology under multiple Security Council resolutions, these measures failed to stop the North from carrying out two failed satellite launch attempts in May and August last year before it succeeded on its third try in November.

According to Japanese coast guard officials cited by Kyodo News, Pyongyang told Tokyo hours ahead of Monday’s trilateral meeting between leaders from South Korea, Japan and China that it plans to launch another satellite before midnight on June 3.

The North also told Japan that debris from the space rocket carrying the satellite will likely fall in two areas west of the Korean Peninsula and one area east of Luzon in the Philippines, according to Kyodo News.

The South Korean military said last week that it had detected signs that the North is preparing for a military spy satellite launch at the Sohae satellite launching station in Cholsan County, North Pyongan Province.

Early last month, South Korean and U.S. intelligence officials tracking developments in the North’s missile and space program noted that the regime had recently conducted combustion tests for rocket stage propellants at the Sohae launch site.

Multistage rockets use two or more stages, each with its own engine and propellant. These stages are jettisoned when they run out of fuel to decrease the mass of the remaining missile, which enables the thrust of the remaining stages to more easily accelerate the rocket to its intended speed and height.

The upcoming satellite could be the first of three that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un said he wants to see launched this year at a meeting with Workers’ Party officials in December.

According to a senior military official quoted in a report by Yonhap News Agency on Sunday, Russian technicians likely entered North Korea after Russian President Vladimir Putin pledged at a summit with Kim in September to support Pyongyang’s satellite program.

The official said that the Russian experts likely had a hand in not only ensuring that the North “very carefully conducted more [rocket] engine tests than expected” but also delaying further satellite launches with their “high standards.”

“North Korea might have been brave enough to stage launches when it didn’t know much, but the [Russian] experts likely told them not to,” the official said.

BY MICHAEL LEE [lee.junhyuk@joongang.co.kr]