North Korean leader Kim Jong-un inspected the military reconnaissance satellite that the regime announced it would launch this year and that “is ready to be installed” on a space rocket, state media said today.
Kim visited with her daughter, on Tuesday, the committee created in the country’s capital, Pyongyang, for the launch of the device, according to images released today by the state news agency KCNA.
“After familiarizing himself in detail with the work of the committee, he inspected the military reconnaissance satellite No. 1, which is ready to be installed after final verification of general assembly and environmental tests”, said KCNA.
The images released show the satellite deliberately out of focus, placed on a platform and connected to cables, while Kim and her daughter, in caps, white smocks and with covers covering their shoes to prevent dirt from entering the enclosure, receive explanations from scientists.
Doubts have been raised about the satellite’s capability, with some South Korean analysts claiming that in public photographs it appears too small and poorly designed to support high-resolution imaging. Photographs that North Korean media have released of past missile launches were low-resolution.
Kim “approved the future action plan of the preparatory committee”, said that “the successful launch of the military reconnaissance satellite is an urgent requirement, given the current security environment in the country” and added that it would also be “a clear step forward”. ” in the “field of space research” for North Korea, the agency noted.
The North Korean leader further stated that, “As the US imperialists and South Korean puppet thugs desperately intensify the campaign of confrontation with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea [North Korea’s official name], it will exert more dignified and offensive way to their sovereignty and right of self-defense to resolutely prevent them and defend the State”.
At the end of last year, the North Korean regime launched, aboard an unknown projectile, a test device that allegedly took pictures of the South Korean capital, Seoul, and the neighboring port city of Incheon, and claimed that the objective was to have the satellite completed by April.
Recently, work has resumed on modernizing the space launch base in Sohae, in the northwest of the country, although experts consider that there is still a lot of work to be done before a satellite can be launched from there.
Some experts, cited by the Efe news agency, do not exclude the possibility that the regime chooses to launch this reconnaissance satellite from a mobile platform.
*With Lusa
