North Korea has brought forward the possible date of a controversial “satellite” launch to as early as Sunday, regional governments say.<\/p>\n
The secretive state will launch the satellite-bearing rocket between 7-14 February, the Japanese government has said, according to reports.<\/p>\n
Pyongyang previously said the launch would take place between 8-25 February.<\/p>\n
The planned launch has been condemned by world powers, which say it is a cover for testing a ballistic missile.<\/p>\n
North Korea did not inform international organisations of any other changes in its plan and the rocket’s expected flight path remains the same, said South Korea’s defence ministry.<\/p>\n
The South has warned the North that it will “pay a harsh price” if it goes ahead with its plan to launch the satellite.<\/p>\n
Japan’s defence minister said he had issued an order to shoot down any missile that threatened to fall on Japanese territory.<\/p>\n
South Korean analysts have speculated that the North might do the launch ahead of 16 February, the birthday of the late North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il.<\/p>\n
North Korea has already provoked international criticism this year with a fourth nuclear bomb test on 6 January.<\/p>\n
A launch in the coming weeks would constitute another major violation of UN Security Council resolutions banning the state from carrying out any nuclear or ballistic missile tests.<\/p>\n
The North insists its space programme is purely scientific in nature, but the US, South Korea and even ally China say the rocket launches are aimed at developing an inter-continental ballistic missile capable of striking the US.<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
North Korea has brought forward the possible date of a controversial “satellite” launch to as early as Sunday, regional governments say. The secretive state will launch the satellite-bearing rocket between 7-14 February, the Japanese government has said, according to reports. Pyongyang previously said the launch would take place between 8-25 February. The planned launch has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-187632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-international"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=187632"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187632\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=187632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=187632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=187632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}