Spy satellites detected what looked to be a Taepodong-2 missile in place Tuesday at the Musudan-ri launching site near North Korea's northeastern coast, said Chosun Ilbo, South Korea's leading daily newspaper, quoting an unidentified diplomatic source.
Once the rocket is installed on the pad, missile experts said, the North Koreans can technically launch it within three or four days -- the time needed for the fueling of a three-stage rocket.
North Korea has said it would launch a rocket over Japan and the Pacific between April 4 and 8 to deliver an experimental communications satellite into orbit. But Washington, Tokyo and Seoul have said the launching is a cover for testing its Taepodong-2 ballistic missile. Both missions -- the satellite and the ballistic missile -- use the same rocket technology.
Washington has warned that it would seek punishment at the Security Council -- probably more sanctions on the already isolated country -- if North Korea goes ahead with the launching. And Japan has vowed to press for new sanctions if the rocket is tested. The Security Council adopted a resolution banning it from further nuclear and missile tests after North Korea detonated its first nuclear device in 2006.
The North's defiance is the first major test for President Obama in dealing with Pyongyang.
"We intend to raise this violation of the Security Council resolution, if it goes forward, in the U.N.," said Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Wednesday. "This provocative action in violation of the U.N. mandate will not go unnoticed, and there will be consequences."
North Korea countered Thursday that further sanctions would cause it to quit the so-called six-party talks, which have been deadlocked since late last year after North Korea expelled international monitors from Yongbyon, its main plutonium-producing nuclear facility. The United States, South Korea, Japan, China and Russia have been trying for years to persuade North Korea to dismantle its nuclear weapons programs in return for economic aid.
Comments from the North's Foreign Ministry spokesman carried by the official KCNA news agency on Thursday also appeared to indicate that the North was threatening to restart Yongbyon if further sanctions were imposed.
"The six-party talks will come to an end," the comments said, and "all the processes for the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula" would be "brought back to what used to be before their start and necessary strong measures will be taken."
The nuclear complex in Yongbyon, 62 miles north of Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, is the North's only known source of weapons-grade plutonium. If North Korea restarts it, it means the end of the most visible achievement the Bush administration had made in dealing with North Korea.
Under an agreement with the United States, North Korea blew up the cooling tower of Yonbyon's nuclear reactor last June and has disabled other parts of the facility, which American officials say has produced enough plutonium for several nuclear bombs.
But some key components, including the reactor core, remain intact, and North Korea can also extract more plutonium from thousands of spent nuclear fuel rods it has unloaded from the reactor.
If North Korea successfully launches its rocket, it would demonstrate that the North has the technological skills to send up a missile that could travel as far as the western United States. Washington and its allies also consider North Korea's missile program an additional threat because the North has sold missile technology to the Middle East and is developing nuclear weapons that could potentially be loaded on its missiles.
After North Korea detonated its first nuclear device in 2006, the Security Council adopted a resolution banning North Korea from further nuclear and missile tests. Won Tae-je, a spokesman for the South Korean Defense Ministry, declined to confirm Thursday's news report, but said a missile test would be "a serious challenge and provocation against the security on the Korean Peninsula and regional stability in Northeast Asia."
A successful launching in the first week of April would also give a timely boost to the domestic reputation of the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il. The country's Parliament is scheduled to convene April 9 to re-elect him.
Mr. Kim, 67, was reported to have suffered a stroke last August. His declining heath has raised questions about his grip on power and the future of his regime, within which no clear successor has emerged.
Some American officials, including Adm. Timothy Keating, the head of the United States Pacific Command, have said that the United States has the capability to shoot down any North Korean missile heading for American territory.
But such an intercept is highly unlikely, according to experts in Seoul, in part because Washington is trying to win the release of two American television journalists recently detained by North Korea. The North has charged them with illegally crossing the Chinese-North Korean border.
Leave a comment