South Korea heightens tensions with space launch

South Korea launched a domestically built rocket into space today in a breakthrough that will embolden North Korean accusations of hypocrisy.

The three-stage KSLV-II Nuri entered orbit after being launched from the Naro Space Centre on a small island off the country’s southwest coast, although it failed in its final task — putting into orbit a dummy satellite. Even so, it was a welcome half-success after years of setbacks and failures.

The mission is likely to be seized upon by North Korea as an example of double standards. Beginning in 1998 the North fired off a series of what it called civilian rockets, which were denounced by the US and South Korea as a front for developing long-range missiles.

These predictions turned out to be correct and North Korea now has an arsenal of ballistic missiles, including weapons with the range to potentially strike the mainland United States.

South Korea says its programme is intended for nothing more than launching civilian satellites.

It was a nervous day for South Korea. In 2010 an earlier version of the Nuri exploded two minutes after take off, and until this afternoon the failure rate for the country’s rockets was 70 per cent.

The launch was postponed by an hour as engineers checked valves in the rocket — among its three million separate parts. But just after 5pm local time the Nuri lifted off smoothly into clear skies and jettisoned its first and second stages on schedule.

The launch confirms South Korea as only the seventh country in the world to have developed a domestic space vehicle that can carry a payload heavier than a tonne, after China, France, India, Japan, Russia and the United States. However, Nuri failed to launch its 1.5-tonne dummy satellite of steel and aluminium, which was supposed to have been placed into a low earth orbit of 600km to 800km.

“It’s very difficult for newcomers to achieve this,” President Moon said at the Space Centre after the launch. “But we achieved it, with no help from other countries.”

A version of the Nuri was successfully launched in 2013, though its first stage was manufactured in Russia.

There is no immediate prospect that South Korea will convert its rocket technology to military use. It already has short and medium-range ballistic missiles although it is bound by an agreement with its US ally to limit these in range to 800km.

Last month South Korea joined the small group of countries able to fire ballistic missiles from a submarine. With a range of 500km, the Hyunmoo 4-4 missile fired from a 3,000-tonne Dosan Ahn Chang-ho class submarine has all of North Korea within its range.

But when North Korea carried out its own submarine missile launch this week, the South expressed its “regret” and the US condemned the action.

“To criticise [North Korea] for developing and test-firing the same weapon system as the one the US possesses or is developing is a clear expression of double standards and it only excites our suspicion about the ‘authenticity’ of its statement that it does not antagonise [North Korea],” a spokesman in Pyongyang said.