South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se on Friday (February 5) held a meeting with the U.S., Japan, EU and Australian ambassadors to South Korea amid the threat of a North Korean satellite launch.
U.S. ambassador to South Korea, Mark Lippert, Japanese Ambassador to South Korea, Koro Bessho, Ambassador of the European Union to South Korea, Gerhard Sabathil, and Australian Ambassador to South Korea, Bill Paterson, attended the meeting at South Korea’s foreign ministry in Seoul.
Yun and the ambassadors were expected to discuss North Korea’s nuclear programme and missile, South Korea’s foreign ministry said.
The North notified U.N. agencies late on Tuesday (February 2) of its plan to launch what it called an “earth observation satellite” some time between February 8 and 25.
North Korea also said in January it had successfully tested a hydrogen bomb but this was met with scepticism by U.S. and South Korean officials and nuclear experts.
Pyongyang has said it has a sovereign right to pursue a space programme by launching rockets, although the United States and other governments worry that such launches are missile tests in disguise.
North Korea said the launch would be conducted in the morning one day during the announced period, and announced the co-ordinates for the locations where the rocket boosters and the cover for the payload would drop.
Those locations are expected to be in the Yellow Sea off the Korean peninsula west coast and in the Pacific Ocean to the east of the Philippines, Pyongyang said.
North Korea last launched a long-range rocket in December 2012, sending an object it described as a communications satellite into orbit.