South warns North over satellite launch, Pyongyang ups rhetoric

South Korea urged the North to abandon its planned launch of a satellite in the direction of the Yellow and East China seas later this month and issued a navigational warning for vessels Tuesday.

North Korea launches a newly developed Chollima-1 rocket carrying the Malligyong-1 satellite from the Sohae satellite launching site in North Pyongan on May 31, as seen in a photo released by the state-run Korean Central News Agency. The launch ended in failure. [YONHAP]

South Korea is urging the North to abandon its planned launch of a satellite in the direction of the Yellow and East China seas later this month.

Seoul also issued a navigational warning for vessels Tuesday.

The Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries issued the warning at 8:08 a.m., after North Korea notified Japan's coast guard earlier Tuesday morning of its intention to launch a satellite between Aug. 24 and Aug. 31.

Pyongyang designated three maritime danger zones that could be affected by the planned satellite launch: around the Yellow Sea, southwest of North Korea, in the East China Sea and a third area east of the Philippine island of Luzon. These areas fall outside Japan's exclusive economic zone (EEZ).

North Korea appears to be making another attempt at launching a military reconnaissance satellite after its last failed attempt in May, and the latest notification came amid ongoing South Korea-U.S. military drills which run through the end of the month.

The South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Tuesday that it "extremely regrets and urges the immediate withdrawal" of Pyongyang's notification to the Japan coast Guard on its satellite launch as early as Thursday.

"North Korea's so-called satellite launch is a clear illegal act in direct violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions that prohibit any launch using ballistic missile technology," said Lim Soo-suk, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, in a briefing.

On May 31, a North Korean rocket carrying a spy satellite crashed into the Yellow Sea shortly after liftoff due to engine failure. North Korea made a rare acknowledgment of failure, saying that the launch of its new Chollima-1 satellite launch rocket had crashed because of instability in the engine and fuel system, vowing that a second attempt would be made "soon."

The May 31 projectile marked the first time in seven years that the North attempted to launch a satellite payload into orbit, the last being the Kwangmyongsong-4 in February 2016.

Pyongyang's latest navigational warning to Japan is in keeping with the World-Wide Navigational Warning System, or WWNWS, a global radio and satellite broadcast system set up by the International Hydrographic Organization, in accordance with a resolution of the International Maritime Organization.

Japan is the area coordinator for Navarea XI, a geographical sea area established to coordinate the broadcast of navigational warnings, with the Japanese coast guard acting as the executing agency to release navigation and safety warnings for the area, to which South and North Korea belong.

A South Korean maritime affairs official confirmed that all three danger zones mentioned by the North on Tuesday "are not areas where many of our vessels pass."

The latest satellite launch notification comes at the heels of the trilateral summit at Camp David last Friday, where President Yoon Suk Yeol, U.S. President Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida condemned North Korea for continuing to pursue its nuclear and missile weapons programs and highlighted the regime's dire human rights situation.

North Korea is barred from conducting any launches that employ ballistic missile technology, including that of satellites, under multiple UN Security Council resolutions.

Pyongyang in turn warned Tuesday that the Seoul-Washington joint military exercise could trigger an unprecedented "thermonuclear war" on the Korean Peninsula, according to its state media.

This comes as South Korea and the United States on Monday began the 11-day Ulchi Freedom Shield, a large-scale joint military and civil exercise designed to bolster preparedness against the North's advancing military threats.

"An unprecedented large-scale thermonuclear war is approaching the Korean Peninsula every moment as reality," reported the North's state-run Korean Central News Agency in an English-language commentary.

The report described the annual combined exercise as a "nuclear war drill with huge aggression forces," claiming the U.S. military "mobilized in the drill not only war hardware and troops deployed in the operational area of the Korean Peninsula but also space forces in its mainland for the first time in history."

It reported that the latest trilateral summit was meant to "detail, plan and formulate" a "nuclear war provocation on the Korean Peninsula," warning that if the Camp David agreements are "put into practice," the "possibility of outbreak of a thermonuclear war" on the peninsula "will become more realistic."

Pyongyang is known for increased bellicose language during large-scale joint military drills between Seoul and Washington as it describes such exercises as "war rehearsals" for an invasion of the North.

BY SARAH KIM [kim.sarah@joongang.co.kr]