North Korean missile triggers ‘false alarm’ evacuation order in South Korea

SEOUL — North Korea on Wednesday launched a spacecraft carrying its first military reconnaissance satellite, designed to track the militaries of South Korea and the United States and help the north conduct nuclear strikes more effectively, South Korean defense officials said.

As the missile hurtled south, a machine-generated automatic emergency text message told citizens in Seoul to prepare to evacuate, fearing debris from the North Korean missile could hit the South Korean capital. traps. The government later retracted the alarm, calling it a “false alarm.”

The South Korean military said the North Korean missile flew over the waters between the Korean peninsula and China.

Similarly, in Japan, the government sent warnings to Okinawa Prefecture urging residents to seek shelter inside and outside windows, but the warning was lifted just after 7 a.m. when the government announced that the missile was not flying towards Japan. Less than 10 minutes later, the Ministry of Defense announced that a projectile had already fallen into the water.

Wednesday’s launch signaled a space race that warmed up in the skies over the Korean peninsula. The United States, Russia, China and Japan already have satellites monitoring the peninsula, one of East Asia’s flashpoints. South Korea recently joined the fray by pledging to launch its first military spy satellite into orbit by 2025 and testing a launch rocket twice since March last year.

When North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un, at a ruling Workers’ Party meeting in 2021, instructed his country to redouble its efforts to expand and diversify its nuclear arsenal, he made military spy satellites one of his priorities in orbit around the Earth

Spy satellites would make the north’s nuclear arsenal more dangerous by turning its military eyes to the sky, military experts say. They would also help North Korea collect data from its missile tests as the country struggles to perfect its intercontinental ballistic missile technologies.

But experts have also questioned the capabilities of the North’s prototype satellite, which the North said would be carried by the rocket launched Wednesday.