U.S., other nations condemn North Korean launch of long-range rocket

North Korea has launched a long-range rocket, violating UN resolutions and doubling down against an international community already determined to punish Pyongyang for a nuclear test last month.
North Korea labelled Sunday's launch part of a purely scientific space programme, but most of the world viewed it as a disguised ballistic missile test.
The rocket, which Pyongyang said carried a satellite, took off at around 9:00am Pyongyang time (00:30 GMT), according to the South Korean defence ministry.
Its pre-orbital flight arc was planned to traverse the Yellow Sea and further south to the Philippine Sea, with both South Korea and Japan threatening to shoot it down if it encroached on their territory.
Multiple UN Security Council resolutions proscribe North Korea's development of its ballistic missile programme.
Despite Pyongyang's insistence on a peaceful space mission, its rockets are considered dual-use technology with both civil and military applications.
'Flagrant violation'
The United States said it would work with the UN Security Council on "significant measures" to hold North Korea to account for the launch, US Secretary of State John Kerry said.
Calling the launch "a flagrant violation" of UN resolutions on the country's use of ballistic missile technology, Kerry in a statement reaffirmed the "ironclad" US defence commitments to Japan and South Korea and called the launch a "destabilising and unacceptable challenge" to peace and security.
Al Jazeera's Adrian Brown, reporting from Beijing, said North Korea had not only defied the US and many other western countries.
"It has also defied China, which is its only ally," Brown said.
Robert Kelly, professor of political science and diplomacy at Pusan National University in Seoul, said the North's main goal behind the rocket tests was "regime security".
"North Korea's government is truly afraid that the US would remove the regime, the way it has done in other countries. And Pyongyang doesn't have a lot of other currency to force the world's hand," Kelly told Al Jazeera.
'Additional sanctions'
With the international community still struggling to find a united response to the North's January 6 nuclear test, the rocket launch - while provocative - is unlikely to substantially up the punitive ante.
"North Korea likely calculates that a launch so soon after the nuclear test will probably only incrementally affect the UN sanctions arising from that test," said Alison Evans a senior analyst at IHS Jane's.
North Korea's chief diplomatic ally, China, has been resisting the US push for tougher sanctions against Pyongyang.
While infuriated by North Korea's refusal to curb its nuclear ambitions, China's overriding concern is avoiding a collapse of the regime in Pyongyang and the possibility of a US-allied unified Korea on its border.
North Korea last launched a long-range rocket in December 2012, placing an earth observation satellite in orbit.
Western intelligence experts said the satellite had never functioned properly, and argued that this proved the mission's scientific veneer was a sham.
Despite Pyongyang's bellicose claims to the contrary, the North is still seen as being years away from developing a credible inter-continental ballistic missile (ICBM).
ICBM 'threat'
Orbital rocket launches, experts say, are relatively straightforward compared to the challenge of mastering the re-entry technology required to deliver a payload as far away as the United States.
"An ICBM warhead, unlike a satellite, needs to come down as well as go up," said aerospace engineer John Schilling, who has closely followed the North's missile programme.
"North Korea has never demonstrated the ability to build a reentry vehicle that can survive at even half the speed an ICBM would require," Schilling said.
"If and when they do, what is presently a theoretical threat will become very real and alarming," he added.
It is also unclear how far North Korea has progressed in miniaturising warheads to fit on the tip of an eventual ICBM.
The North said last month's nuclear test was of a miniaturised hydrogen bomb. Most experts dispute the claim, saying the yield was far to low for a full-fledged H-bomb.