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North Korea defiantly launched its third long-range rocket Friday, but acknowledged failure to place a satellite in orbit. Debris of the three-stage rocket dropped into the sea shortly after takeoff.

The official Korean Central News Agency(KCNA) said in a brief dispatch, “The earth observation satellite failed to enter its preset orbit.” Adding that technicians and experts were looking into the cause of the failure.

The rare admission came about four hours after South Korea and the U.S. said the launch seen as a test of a ballistic missile ended in failure shortly after the blast off on Friday morning.

The Unha-3 rocket took off from the Dongchang-ri launch site at 7:39 a.m., and appears to have separated into several pieces due to unconfirmed technical faults, South Korea Defense Ministry spokesman Kim Min-seok said.

U.S. defense authorities also confirmed North Korea’s multistage rocket launch as a failure. “U.S. systems detected and tracked the launch of the North Korean Taepo Dong-2 missile at 6:39 p.m. EDT (eastern daylight time). The missile was tracked on a southerly launch over the Yellow Sea,” the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) United States Northern Command (USNORTHCOM) said. Initial indications are that the first stage of the missile fell into the sea 165 kilometers west of Seoul, they added.

South Korean Military sources said the rocket appears to have dropped into the Yellow Sea about 190 to 200 kilometers off South Korea‘s western port city of Gunsan, without the separation of its first and second stages, according to tracking of the rocket’s trajectory by the South Korean military.

U.S. news cable channel CNN also reported, citing unidentified U.S. officials, that the launch appeared to have ended in failure. Japanese broadcaster NHK reported, citing a Japanese Ministry of Defense official, the rocket was broken up into four pieces and fell into Yellow Sea.

South Korean Foreign Minister Kim Sung-hwan cofirmed the failure of launch and strongly condemned it as “a clear violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1874 and a provocative act that threatens peace and security in the Korean peninsula and in Northeast Asia.”

“Despite the failure of its attempted missile launch, North Korea‘s provocative action threatens regional security, violates international law and contravenes its own recent commitments,” White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said in a statement.

Foreign Minister Kim Sung-hwan and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pledged to take “resolute” action against the launch and agreed to refer the issue to the U.N. Security Council, an official said.

South Korea called for the United Nations Security Council to respond to North Korea’s launch, even though it appears to have failed.

The UN Security Council will hold an emergency session on Friday to “to decide its next step” following the launch, a UN diplomat said. It is expected to issue statement condemning North Korea within a few days.

North Korean launches tend to follow a predictable sequence: the rocket launch, then UNSC condemnation, followed by a nuclear test.

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