PYONGYANG:
News of North Korea's abortive rocket
launch was flashed around the world Friday but there were four long hours of
silence before Pyongyang admitted the highly publicised attempt had failed.
"The
earth observation satellite failed to enter its preset orbit. Scientists,
technicians and experts are now looking into the cause of the failure,"
the KCNA official news agency finally said in a terse report.
But
there was still no word from officials on the ground for scores of foreign
journalists invited by the normally secretive state to witness what was touted
as a historic occasion.
The
United States and many other nations have condemned the launch as a pretext for
testing banned ballistic missile technology.
But the
nuclear-armed North, which normally tightly restricts media visits, threw its
doors open to emphasise what it called its peaceful intentions in space.
Last
Sunday it gave many of them an unprecedented visit to the Tongchang-ri space
centre in the country's northwest, where they saw the satellite and the Unha-3
rocket.
On
Wednesday they were treated to another ground-breaking visit to the mission
control centre in a suburb north of the capital.
During
both visits, local media filmed and photographed the journalists.
State
television station KRT has frequently broadcast those images, with a commentary
saying the foreign reporters were convinced that North Korea would carry out a
civilian satellite launch.
But
blast-off, first reported by South Korean news outlets, took journalists
billeted at Pyongyang's luxury Yanggakdo International Hotel by surprise.
At a
specially outfitted media centre in a circular conference room, TV crews and
cameramen had set up about a dozen tripods facing a huge white screen which was
installed Thursday.
But the
centre was almost empty when the news broke from Seoul, and the screen remained
blank.
The
launch was to have been the centrepiece of mass celebrations marking the 100th
anniversary on Sunday of the birth of founding leader Kim Il-Sung.
The
impoverished nation, which suffers persistent food and electricity shortages,
spent hundreds of millions of dollars on the launch, according to South Korean
officials.
The
luxury hotel on an island in the Taedong River contrasts with the utilitarian concrete
apartment blocks which make up much of the city.
A
restaurant on the 47th floor offers a panoramic night-time view -- of a largely
darkened metropolis.
In a
nation whose leaders are shrouded in a personality cult, the hotel bookshop
offers only the works of Kim Il-Sung and his successor Kim Jong-Il, textbooks
on the Kimjongilia national flower and similar laudatory material.
Launch
failures may be embarrassing, but they are not uncommon even for wealthy and
technologically advanced nations.
Christian
Lardier, space editor at France's Air and Cosmos magazine, estimated there were
an average 75 satellite launch attempts every year worldwide.
Each
year there were four or five failures, he told AFP in Pyongyang.
But the
North, other analysts said, was likely to be chastened by the failure given its
extensive publicity build-up.
"Obviously
the rocket launch is pretty embarrassing for Kim Jung-Un and North Korea,"
said Tate Nurkin, managing director at leading defence publication IHS Jane's.
Kim Jong-Un,
grandson of Kim Il-Sung, is working to bolster his authority after taking over
power when his own father Kim Jong-Il died last December.
Given
the advance publicity "it is hard to imagine a greater humiliation",
wrote North Korea expert Marcus Noland on the blog of the Peterson Institute
for International Economics.
"Some
of the scientists and engineers associated with the launch are likely facing
death or the gulag as scapegoats for this embarrassment."
-
AFP/wm
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