North Korea said that it is planning to launch its first military spy satellite in June, noting that the military equipment is necessary due to the United States’s “reckless” military exercises with South Korea.
Ri Pyong Chol, vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission of the North’s ruling Workers’ Party, said in a statement published by state media that the ongoing military exercises between South Korea and the U.S. revealed “their reckless ambition for aggression.” The U.S. and South Korea have engaged in the military exercises over the last month, including last week when they held large live-fire drills near the North Korean border.
Ri’s statement said North Korea’s reconnaissance satellite will launch at some point in June and will be used for “strengthening the military preparedness of the armed forces of the [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea].” He repeatedly denounced the U.S’s drills as “dangerous” and “reckless” in his statement and accused the U.S. of conducting “hostile air espionage activities” near the country.
“Under the present situation brought by the reckless military acts by the U.S. and south Korea, we steadily feel the need to expand reconnaissance and information means and improve various defensive and offensive weapons and have the timetables for carrying out their development plans,” Ri said.
“We will comprehensively consider the present and future threats and put into more thoroughgoing practice the activities for strengthening all-inclusive and practical war deterrents,” Ri added.
The Associated Press reported that South Korean Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lim Soo-suk urged North Korea to not launch its military spy satellite, calling North Korea’s move “absurd.”
“It’s absurd to use our legitimate joint exercises, and the maintenance of the South Korea-US joint defense posture to respond to advancing North Korean nuclear and missile threats, as an excuse to launch a reconnaissance satellite,” Lim said at a briefing.