SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea’s newly launched reconnaissance satellite has captured photos of the White House, the Pentagon and a key U.S. mainland naval base, Pyongyang’s state media claimed Tuesday.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un reportedly viewed the photos of U.S. installations as part of a briefing on the satellite’s operations from the Pyongyang General Control Center of the National Aerospace Technology Administration, or NATA, the state-controlled Korean Central News Agency said in a report.
According to the KCNA dispatch, Mr. Kim “received in detail satellite photos of the Norfolk Naval Base, the Newport News Dockyard and an airfield of Virginia, US, taken at 23:35:53 on Nov. 27 (Pyongyang Time) and the White House and the Pentagon in Washington and other objects at 23:36:25 on Nov. 27 (Pyongyang Time). Four U.S. Navy nuclear carriers and one British aircraft carrier were spotted in the photos of the Norfolk Naval Base and the Newport News Dockyard.”
North Korea’s successful launch into orbit of its first military surveillance satellite has rattled South Korea and the United States and sparked a potential breakdown of the 2018 bilateral agreement designed to lower tensions on the divided peninsula.
In response to the Nov. 21 launch, Seoul suspended a clause of the 2018 bilateral military agreement. Pyongyang said it was withdrawing from the entire agreement. Two days later, North Korean troops were seen conducting activities inside the Demilitarized Zone in defiance of the de-escalation accord.
The North Korean report Tuesday seemed designed to advertise Pyongyang’s new ability to monitor its adversaries close to home and far away. The Malligyong-1 spy satellite was put into orbit after two failed attempts this year. North Korea said it needed the satellite as a defense against a potential surprise attack from Seoul or Washington.
A leather-coated Mr. Kim, accompanied by his daughter Ju-ae, was shown in state media photographs posing with uniformed staff of NATA. He has dubbed the reconnaissance satellite North Korea’s “space guard and powerful sighting telescope.”
Mr. Kim’s apparent exuberance over his new asset is understandable, given the dents punched into national prestige by the failed satellite launches in May and August.
In September, he took a rare trip to Russia’s Far East to meet with President Vladimir Putin at a satellite launch center. Though no details of their discussions have been released, it is widely assumed that North Korea offered shells and other munitions to help Russia’s struggling campaign in Ukraine in exchange for technical and other assistance from the Kremlin.
The day after the Malligyong-1 satellite blasted off, North Korean media claimed it had photographed Guam, home to the strategic U.S. military base in the Pacific.
The South Korean National Intelligence Service assessed that Russian assistance enabled the successful launch and operation of the satellite.
North Korean troops were seen once again Tuesday sporting sidearms in Panmunjom, the truce village inside the Demilitarized Zone. Elsewhere in the DMZ, North Korean troops were photographed moving machine guns into newly constructed guard posts.
Both moves breach the 2018 bilateral military agreement, one negotiated as President Trump pursued unusual personal diplomacy with Mr. Kim in search of an elusive denuclearization deal.
South Korea, which has no reconnaissance satellites of its own and relies on U.S. satellites to monitor developments in the North, said it was postponing a planned launch of its own spy satellite Thursday because of weather concerns, The Associated Press reported. South Korean military officials said the launch would not be rescheduled until Saturday at the earliest.
The South Korean Defense Ministry has contracted with the U.S. private firm SpaceX to put five spy satellites into orbit by 2025. The first launch using SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket was scheduled at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, AP reported.
Western analysts are divided over the usefulness of the North Korean satellite in altering the delicate balance of power on the Korean Peninsula.
Ankit Panda, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and an expert on North Korea’s weapons of mass destruction, said on social media: “Given that North Korea has nuclear weapons, I would prefer it to have better eyes and ears than the opposite.”
Some in South Korea agree. They say accurate data from the spy satellite reduces the odds that the isolated Kim regime will miscalculate and start a war.
Others say the satellite will prove a useful addition to Pyongyang’s offensive toolbox, enhancing the power and accuracy of its formidable array of nuclear and conventional missiles.
The U.S. and its allies have said the North’s use of ballistic missile technology to launch the satellite constituted a violation of long-standing U.N. Security Council sanctions. The Security Council, deeply divided since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, has so far failed to condemn the launch.
• This article is based in part on wire service reports.
• Andrew Salmon can be reached at asalmon@washingtontimes.com.
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