Impoverished North Korea rejected international protests over its planned long-range rocket launch and said yesterday that it was injecting fuel “as we speak,” meaning it could blast off as early as today.
If all goes to plan, the launch, which North Korea’s neighbours and the West say is a disguised ballistic missile test, will take a three-stage rocket over a sea separating the Korean peninsula from China before releasing a satellite into orbit when the third stage fires over waters near the Philippines.
Regional powers also worry it could be the prelude to another nuclear test, a pattern the hermit state set in 2009.
Once the refuelling has been completed, the North Koreans will have to inject chemicals into the rocket which cause corrosion, which means the firing could begin today, at the start of a five-day window announced already by Pyongyang.