Pyongyang would regard any tampering with its recently launched satellite as a declaration of war and will respond accordingly, a North Korean Ministry of Defence spokeswoman threatened on Saturday.
The statement came in response to a question from Radio Free Asia concerning Washington’s capabilities to counter North Korea’s first spy satellite, which was answered by US Space Forces Public Affairs Officer Sheryll Klinkel. “Joint Force space operations could deny an adversary’s space and counterspace capabilities and services using a variety of reversible and irreversible means, reducing the effectiveness and lethality of adversary forces across all domains,” Klinkel said in a statement.
The spokesperson for North Korea’s defense ministry warned that “any attack on [a] space asset of [the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea] will be deemed declaration of war against it.”
Pyongyang’s Malligyong-1 satellite is “the territory of the DPRK, where its sovereignty is exercised” in line with international treaties on space exploration. This means that an attack against the craft will be treated as an attack against North Korea itself, the statement pointed out.
If Malligyong-1 is interfered with, “countless spy satellites of the United States flying above the Korean peninsula region every day, exclusively tasked with monitoring the major strategic spots of the DPRK, should be deemed primary targets to be destroyed,” it said.
“By openly unveiling its aggression scheme to mount a military attack on a space asset of another sovereign country… the US has [shown] its true colours as the chief culprit of evils, seeking to realise its wild ambition of dominating the world by turning outer space, the common wealth of humankind, into a theatre of war,” a spokesman for the defence ministry said.
North Korea launched Malligyong-1 on November 21, saying that it has already taken photographs of the country.
