Kim’s sister vows to launch spy satellite
The influential sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has vowed again to launch a spy satellite as she lambasted a UN Security Council meeting over the first, failed launch last week.
An emergency meeting of the UN body was convened at the request of the US, Japan and other countries to discuss the launch because it had violated council resolutions banning the North from performing any launch using ballistic missile technology. The rocket involved crashed off the Korean peninsula’s west coast.
Kim’s sister and senior ruling party official Kim Yo-jong called the UN council “a political appendage” of the United States, saying its recent meeting was convened following America’s “gangster-like request”.
She accused the UN council of being “discriminative and rude” because it only took issue with the North’s satellite launches while thousands of satellites launched by other countries were already operating in space.
She said her country’s attempt to acquire a spy satellite was a legitimate step to respond to military threats posed by the US and its allies.
“[North Korea] will continue to take proactive measures to exercise all the lawful rights of a sovereign state, including the one to a military reconnaissance satellite launch,” Kim Yo-jong said in a statement carried by state media.
In an earlier statement on Friday, Kim Yo-jong said the North’s spy satellite “will be correctly put on space orbit in the near future” but did not say when it would be launched.
A military surveillance satellite is among a list of sophisticated weapons systems that Kim Jong-un has vowed to acquire amid protracted security tensions with the United States. Since the start of 2022, Kim has carried out more than 100 missile tests in what he called a warning over expanded military drills between the US and South Korea.
Experts say Kim would want to use his modernised weapons arsenal to wrest concessions from Washington and its partners in future diplomacy.
North Korea was slapped with rounds of UN sanctions over its past nuclear and missile tests and satellite launches.