[Editorial] N.K. rocket launch

If one were to select the country most likely to sway the outcome of the upcoming presidential election in South Korea, it would definitely be North Korea. A Pyongyang-initiated skirmish in the West Sea would rally security-minded South Korean voters behind the ruling conservative Saenuri Party.

North Korea’s rocket launch on Wednesday, though perhaps less threatening than a direct attack, could still have a grave impact on the election. As such, the opposition center-left Democratic United Party will have to brace for the impact of the launch of what the North claimed to be a satellite but other countries believed to be an intercontinental ballistic missile.

On Saturday, the North said the launch, which had been scheduled for Dec. 10-22, could be postponed, without offering the reason or a new timeframe. Two days later, it said the launch would be delayed by one week because of a technical problem.

Still, even before the launch the possibility could not have been ruled out that the rocket would lift off ahead of the Dec. 19 election. Anyone could confirm this possibility upon reading the fine print of the second North Korean announcement.

The North said its engineers “found a technical deficiency in the first-stage control engine module of the rocket carrying the satellite and decided to extend the satellite launch window up to Dec. 29.” The wording implied the launch could happen anytime during the Dec. 10-29 period if the technical glitch was fixed during the extended timeframe.

According to news reports, the rocket was being disassembled on the ground to fix the problem. But earlier reports said a crane was removed from the launch pad ― a sign that a launch was ready. Even so, making a decision to go ahead with the launch was an entirely different matter as it would invite international sanctions. North Korea was banned from conducting missile or nuclear tests by U.N. resolutions adopted in 2006 and 2009 after it tested nuclear devices.

Before the launch, a growing number of countries went on record as opposing the satellite program. It must have been most painful to North Korea that China, its sole military ally, was among them.

China had been ambivalent on North Korea’s rocketry program until recently. When North Korea had announced on Dec. 1 that it would launch a satellite rocket, China had acknowledged that Pyongyang had the right to the peaceful use of outer space but said that it was subject to a missile-test ban imposed by the U.N. Security Council.

But in a departure from its earlier posture, China warned against the launch on Friday, urging North Korea to act prudently for stability on the Korean peninsula. On Monday, it said it was monitoring North Korea’s decision to delay the launch, implying that it was expecting the North to cancel the planned launch.

The pressure China was exerting on North Korea to behave itself offered a flicker of hope that it would abide by the U.N. resolutions. If there was a country that could persuade North Korea against the launch, it was China, which had been helping to prop up North Korea’s decrepit economy.

Washington, which said North Korea had yet to make a change in its launch plan, was looking to China for help. It said on Monday that it wanted China to keep pressuring the North to abandon it. As a State Department spokesperson said, “The question was what influence China could bring to bear on the DPRK (North Korea) to see reason and focus on the development of their country and feeding of people rather than on ballistic missile launches that are in violation of their international obligations.”

As it went ahead with its rocketry program, it dug itself deeper into diplomatic isolation. According to a news report, as many as 28 countries had already expressed their opposition to the North Korean program.

By launching the rocket, North Korea had much more to lose than to gain. It should have abandoned the program and taken confidence-building measures as a responsible member of the international community. But it didn’t, defying warnings from China and the United States.

Now North Korea will have to face the consequences of its ill-advised action, including stern sanctions to be imposed by the U.N. Security Council. It is also deprived of a chance to better feed its undernourished residents with assistance from outside.