South Korean President Park Geun-hye called for strong sanctions as he branded the move “an unforgivable act of provocation”.
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President Obama confirmed in an interview Monday that the United States is consulting with South Korea about more missile defenses.
Multiple UN Security Council resolutions prohibit North Korea’s development of its ballistic missile program.
The launch, widely seen as a disguised long-range missile test, sparked global condemnations and resulted in an agreement at the UN Security Council to impose new sanctions against the increasingly defiant State.
“China is afraid that more sanctions will reduce China’s influence in North Korea”, Shi Yinhong, a professor of worldwide relations at Renmin University, told the New York Times, adding that Beijing does not want to turn its intractable ally into a unsafe enemy.
The United States hopes to deploy the THAAD missile defense system to South Korea “as quickly as possible” and the two countries will begin formal discussions on the matter “in the next few days”, the Defense Department said Monday.
On Sunday, Pyongyang proceeded with the controversial launch despite global objections, drawing strong protests from neighboring South Korea.
The U.N. Security Council hasn’t yet passed a resolution to condemn North Korea for its January 6 nuclear test which was also “a slap in the face to the worldwide community”, Elise says.
“No country shall undermine other countries’ security interests while pursuing its own”, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said on Sunday.
Now the longtime allies are set to formally discuss deploying the U.S.-made Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, known as THAAD, to South Korea.
While government leaders around the world are trying to figure out how to punish North Korea for its rocket launch, the U.S., Japanese and South Korean militaries are scouring the seas for debris and analysts are studying photos, trajectories anything that might provide insight into North Korean rocketry skills.
The defense ministry said the DPRK had succeeded twice in its long-range ballistic missile launch, including the three-stage Unha-3 rocket that carried a Kwangmyongsong-3 observation satellite into space in December 2012.
An official with South Korea’s Defense Ministry said that the booster “separated from [the rocket’s] main body and exploded into about 270 pieces”.
While China firmly opposes the deployment of such anti-missile hardware so close to its borders, the move to place THAAD in South Korea underscores Washington’s frustrations with Beijing’s failure to take a tougher line with Pyongyang over its nuclear weapons program.
Critics have said the satellite launch, which has been touted as a victory in Pyongyang, is a cover for a test of the North’s ballistic missile technology.
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North Korea have also restarted the production of plutonium this week.
