North Korea last week successfully launched its first reconnaissance satellite, which it has said was designed to monitor U.S. and South Korean military movements.
Senior U.N. official Khaled Khiari told the 15-member Security Council that while Pyongyang issued a pre-launch notification to the Japanese Coast Guard, it did not notify the International Maritime Organization, the International Civil Aviation Organization, or the International Telecommunications Union.
Formally known as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), North Korea has been under U.N. sanctions for its ballistic missile and nuclear programs since 2006. This includes a ban on the development of ballistic missiles. Pyongyang says it is exercising its right to self-defense with its ballistic missile tests to safeguard its sovereignty and security interests from military threats.
For the past several years the U.N. Security Council has been divided over how to deal with Pyongyang. Russia and China, veto powers along with the U.S., Britain, and France, have said more sanctions will not help and want such measures to be eased.
China and Russia say joint military drills by the United States and South Korea provoke Pyongyang, while Washington accuses Beijing and Moscow of emboldening North Korea by shielding it from more sanctions.
The United Nations ambassadors of the United States and North Korea sparred at the Security Council on Monday over Pyongyang's first spy satellite launch and the reasons for growing tensions in a rare, direct, public exchange between the adversaries.
After a nearly six-year absence, North Korea again started sending its U.N. envoy to Security Council meetings on its nuclear and ballistic missile programs in July. The 15-member body met on Monday over the Nov. 21 spy satellite launch.
At the end of the meeting, U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield and North Korean Ambassador Kim Song made unplanned remarks, engaging in dueling rights-of-reply across the council table, each arguing that their countries are acting defensively.
Spy satellite takes photos of White House, Pentagon
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un received photos of the White House, Pentagon, and U.S. aircraft carriers in the naval base of Norfolk, taken by its recently launched spy satellite, state media KCNA said on Tuesday.
The photos were the latest in a series of images of what KCNA described as “major target regions” sent by the satellite, including the South Korean capital of Seoul and U.S. military bases.
Kim also inspected satellite photos of the Andersen Air Force Base in the U.S. Western Pacific territory of Guam and a U.S. shipyard and airbase in Norfolk and Newport, where a total of four nuclear-powered air carriers and a British air carrier were spotted, KCNA said.
The United States and South Korea have condemned the satellite launch as a violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions banning any use of ballistic technology.
SOURCE: REUTERS
