The launch of a North Korean spy satellite ended in failure, sending the booster and payload plunging into the sea, and triggering emergency alerts in South Korea and Japan.
South Korea last week placed satellites in orbit with a domestically designed and produced rocket for the first time, and China sent three astronauts to its space station as part of crew rotation on Tuesday.
Lee Choon Geun, honorary research fellow at South Korea's Science and Technology Policy Institute, said it was a rare opportunity for South Korea to retrieve part of a North Korean rocket, and perhaps even the satellite. He played down the prospect of another imminent launch, noting it might take the North several months to fix the technical issue.
"I was so panicked. Nine-one-one lines were busy and the internet was slow," said Lee Juyeon, 33, a resident in the city of nine million who was preparing to shelter in a basement with her young child before learning it was a false alarm.A woman looks at her phone with an emergency evacuation warning text message sent to Seoul residents, as she watches a news program at a railway station in the South Korean capital on Wednesday.
The White House condemned a launch using ballistic missile technology and said in a statement it was assessing the situation in co-ordination with allies.Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno said North Korea's rocket disappeared from radar above the Yellow Sea and did not make it into space, and said the government had no further information to share now.
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