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By Kim Kyu-won, staff writer
The South Korean government called North Korea’s announcement of a planned satellite launch in April to be a “grave provocation” and made plans to discuss a response with other countries involved at next week‘s Nuclear Security Summit.
According to Blue House spokesman Park Jung-ha, President Lee Myung-bak called a meeting of foreign affairs and national security ministers Monday morning to hear reports on North Korea’s long-range rocket launch.
“The government has determined that North Korea‘s planned launch of a ‘communications satellite’ is a grave provocation, with the development of means for long-range transportation of a nuclear weapon using ballistic missile technology, and it plans to develop measures in response,” Park said.
Park also indicated that the government plans to discuss the matter with leaders from the US, Japan, China, Russia, and the European Union at next week’s Nuclear Security Summit and work with them on addressing the issue.
The Ministry of National Defense said in a Monday briefing that the North Korean satellite launch was intended to “beef up its ballistic missile capabilities” and criticized it as a “grave provocation that harms the peace and security of the Korean Peninsula and Northeast Asia.”
Yoon Won-sik, an Army colonel and director of the ministry’s public information bureau, said it had set up a response team led by a general in intelligence operations. He also said a Navy Aegis destroyer would be used to track the course of any long-range rocket launched according to North Korea’s plans.
“We will prepare thoroughly under the assumption that there is great potential for a nuclear test or additional military provocation after the long-range rocket launch, as in 2009,” Yoon added.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade dismissed a proposal Saturday from North Korea‘s Korean Committee of Space Technology to invite foreign experts to observe the situation with the Kwangmyongsong-3 launch. Ministry spokesman Cho Byung-je said Monday that the proposal was “not worthy of attention” and that “an observation is unthinkable, given that it’s in violation of a UN Security Council resolution.”
North Korea has invited the International Atomic Energy Agency to return, three years after expelling its nuclear monitors, the agency said. Without disclosing the North’s terms, IAEA spokeswoman Gill Tudor said Monday that it received the invitation on Friday. That was the same day that Pyongyang announced it plans to test a missile by launching a satellite, a move that Washington has suggested could jeopardize a nuclear moratorium deal reached with the United States last month.　
IAEA’s announcement of the overture from the North came just hours after Ri Yong Ho, a senior North Korean nuclear negotiator, said Pyongyang was sending invitations to agency inspectors as part of the implementation of the moratorium. But Ri claimed that North Korea’s satellite launch scheduled for April is “a separate issue” from the bilateral agreement with the United States in Beijing in February.
It is noteworthy how neighboring countries will respond to the NK’s two pronged strategy of at the same time inviting IAEA inspectors and announcing a plan to launch a long-range rocket. Washington criticized NK’s use of ballistic missile technology as a violation of UN Security Council resolution 1874. The US stopped short of declaring that North Korea’s planned launch breaks the Feb. agreement, in which NK agreed to stop its uranium enrichment program.

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