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On Wednesday, May 31, a North Korean rocket launch failed. Intended to put the country’s first spy satellite into orbit, the projectile crashed into the Yellow Sea when its engine failed. Pyongyang had announced a launch would take place in the coming days, but Japanese and South Korean authorities issued evacuation or shelter-in orders. In Seoul, the awakening was especially stressful for the nearly ten million residents of the capital.
First modification:
With our correspondent in Seoul, Nicolas Rocca
The alert, sent at 06:41 (21:41 Tuesday) to all mobile phones in Seoul, read: “Citizens, please prepare to evacuate and allow children and the elderly to evacuate first.” But 20 minutes later, the authorities backed down.
BREAKING: South Korea says it accidentally issued “wartime alert” which was sent to phones and triggered air raid sirens. There is no threat from North Korea’s missile pic.twitter.com/sROxqcyFZs
—BNO News (@BNONews) May 30, 2023
“We inform you that the alert sent at 06:41 a.m. was issued in error,” said a second alert.
The retraction generated anger and frustration, including calls on social media for Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon to resign.
Although the panic only lasted for about twenty minutes, the confusion and anxiety were palpable. Some residents said they were packing up to leave the city.
“It was a space launch over the ocean,” tweeted Jeffrey Lewis, a nonproliferation expert at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies.
“It’s like Japan issued haven alerts every time South Korea did a space launch,” he said.
Air Raid Sirens heard minutes ago in both the City of Seoul, South Korea and on the Japanese Island of Okinawa with both of the Alerts stating that Residents should Shelter-in-Place and await possible orders to Evacuate. pic.twitter.com/CzCWm9LGhZ
—OSINTdefender (@sentdefender) May 30, 2023
The technology used to launch a rocket is the same as for ballistic missiles, which may partly explain why the alert was issued. But in almost three years in Seoul, this is the first time this has happened, and that North Korea has fired a record number of missiles in this period. A failure in the alert system that is giving rise to talk in the capital, since the rocket’s trajectory was very far from Seoul and Pyongyang had warned of the imminent launch.
What was the cause of the launch failure?
We know the name of the rocket, Chollima 1-. According to North Korean state media, the engine failed during the separation of the first stage and the rocket ended up in the Yellow Sea, some 200 km from South Korea. The South Korean military has recovered debris from the rocket, which was meant to launch the regime’s first spy satellite into orbit.
This is one of Kim Jong-un’s military objectives, as it would provide real-time information on the activities of the armies of Seoul and Washington, increasingly active on the eve of the 70th anniversary of the end of the Korean War, which will be held this summer.
