President Barack Obama delivered a withering put-down of North Korea’s long-range rocket ambitions after a failed launch in April, saying that its engineers “don’t seem real good” at ballistic missile technology.
But after Pyongyang’s apparently successful satellite launch yesterday , the US president can no longer dismiss its rocket programme quite so easily.
North Korea immediately claimed the launch as a success with state media saying the satellite had “entered the projected trajectory”, although it was unclear whether the Eunha-3 (Galaxy 3) rocket had delivered a satellite into space. In the past, Pyongyang has declared a successful satellite launch, but the US and others have dismissed those claims, saying the rockets failed in flight.