North Korea says it will soon have its own spies in the skies capable of seeing what its enemies are doing, just as the U.S. has been spying on the North for decades.
Pyongyang’s Korean Central News Agency made that claim this week, reporting that the North has tested its first spy satellite and will have one of them up for real by April. The KCNA report was the latest word on North Korean progress in developing missiles and nuclear warheads as “defense” against its enemies, the U.S., Japan and South Korea.
Kim Yo Jong, younger sister of North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un, scoffed at claims that the cameras weren’t as good as advertised by the North Koreans. Pyongyang’s KoreanCentral News Agency quoted her as saying “so-called experts were so keen on finding fault with others that they could not but make such senseless words.”
Such talk was “nonsense,” said Yo Jong, while North Korea hinted it might launch a missile strike against Japan in response to Japan’s policy shift calling for counter- strikes against its enemies. The North threatened :actual action to show “how much we are concerned and displeased” with “Japan's move to realize unjust and excessive ambition.”
The U.S. and South Korea got into the act that was sure to evoke a torrent of rhetoric from the North. In the biggest show of force in the skies over and around South Korea, U.S. F22 Stealth bombers and B52s joined South Korean F35’s and F15’s in what the American and South Korean commands said were preplanned exercises.
Coincidentally or not, the war games came after the North claimed its "important, final-stage test of rockets Sunday was part of its military reconnaissance satellite project and made public those two photos, presumed to be taken from a mock satellite.
Some experts here soon said the quality of the imagery is too poor.
Earlier, the North, under the watchful gaze of leader Kim Jong Un, tested what it called a “high-thrust solid-fuel motor” designed to get missiles out of hiding and onto the launch pad before enemy satellites see them. Also, the souped-up motor should ensure that missiles, with or without nukes, are easier to steer to their targets.
The North revealed its rapid advance as a military threat to the region days after Japan said it was doubling its military budget to $320 billion in five years as needed for defense against both North Korea and China.