DPRK defends its right to satellite launch

 

The Democratic People's Republic of Korea has asserted its legitimate right to launch satellites. Its official news agency KCNA says countries, including the US, Japan and South Korea are continuing their hostile policy toward the DPRK by criticizing the satellite launch as a missile launch.

According to the DPRKs official news agency KCNA, the peaceful use of space is a universally recognized legitimate right of a sovereign state. It states that the satellite launch for scientific research can "by no means be a monopoly of specified countries." Moreover, it says it is intolerable to use the satellite launch as "a lever for political, military and economic pressure upon the DPRK."

The DPRK has also expressed its readiness to invite experts and journalists of other countries to visit the Sohae Satellite Launch Station.

Shortly after the DPRK announced the planned satellite launch, the US said it will be hard to provide food aid if Pyongyang moves ahead with the launch.

The DPRK is to launch satellite Kwangmyongsong-3, which it manufactured to mark the 100th birthday of late leader Kim Il-Sung, in mid-April. The KCNA also said that the two previously launched experimental satellites, Kwangmyongsong-1 in 1998 and Kwangmyongsong-2 in 2009, had strictly abided by relevant international regulations and practices.