’Grave provocation’: North Korea vows to test long-range rocket

journalstar.com

By Reuters

SEOUL, South Korea -- North Korea is to carry out its second rocket launch of 2012 as its youthful leader Kim Jong Un flexes his muscles a year after his father's death, in a move that will likely heighten diplomatic tensions and draw criticism from Washington.

North Korea's state news agency announced the decision to launch another space satellite on Saturday, just a day after Kim met a senior delegation from China's Communist Party in the North Korean capital of Pyongyang.

China, under new leadership, is North Korea's only major political backer and has continually urged peace on the Korean peninsula, where the North and South remain technically at war after an armistice, rather than a peace treaty, ended the 1950-53 conflict.

No comment on the planned launch was immediately available from Beijing's foreign ministry.

Seoul's foreign ministry said in a statement that the move was a "grave provocation". Japan's Kyodo news agency said Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda had ordered ministries to be on alert for the launch. More >>