South Korea credits the launch of the first North Korean spy satellite into orbit this week. Hence, he has announced the partial suspension of a detente treaty signed five years ago under his previous government. Pyongyang, meanwhile, says that Kim Jong Un's new war toy has already provided it with photos of the US military base on the island of Guam, in the Pacific archipelago of the Marianas.
Hours earlier, the North Korean dictatorship had provided images of the launch of the rocket carrying the satellite. It was his third attempt this year, after two failed attempts.
The launch of the Pyongyang satellite into orbit is part of the new space race between the two Koreas. The next movement will take place on November 30, the scheduled date for the launch of the first South Korean spy satellite, aboard a Falcon 9 rocket from SpaceX, Elon Musk's company. Seoul, which hopes to deploy five satellites for military use in the coming years, has until now depended on data provided by the US and Japan.
In any case, the fact that the ancient North Korean communist dictatorship has gone ahead of ultra-technological South Korea, even by a week, will be sold as a landslide victory by Pyongyang. There is speculation in Seoul whether it may have something to do with the renewed military relationship between Russia and North Korea, whose presidents met in the Russian Far East just two months ago. If true, it would be a violation of the United Nations sanctions on the North Korean ballistic - and nuclear - program, approved at the time with the approval of Russia and China.
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has expressed a complaint along these lines. Late on Tuesday, the launch of the North Korean rocket set off anti-missile sirens in the Japanese archipelago of Okinawa, although the call to go to shelters was lifted shortly after.
The official North Korean agency, for its part, has reported the satisfaction of the Brilliant Comrade when seeing images from this morning "of the Anderson air base, the Apra naval base" and other US military installations facing Asia, more 9,000 kilometers from America. All of them allegedly supplied by Malligyong-1, the name of the satellite.
This will officially begin operating on December 1, after several days of adjustments. Its launch has led to South Korea suspending the clauses that limited its aerial reconnaissance activities along the militarized border. Between this and the first North Korean artillery positions there is a Demilitarized Zone about four kilometers wide.
Pyongyang justifies its escalation by the "belligerent" initiatives of the right-wing president of South Korea, Yoon Suk Yeol, which have marked a break with the rapprochement measures of his centrist predecessor, Moon Jae In, under the umbrella of the strange meetings in the third phase between Donald Trump himself and Kim Jong Un.
Yoon, on the other hand, has opened Korea's doors even further to the American military. In the last few hours, for example, the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson and the submarine USS Santa Fe, both nuclear-powered, arrived in the south of the peninsula. This is the third visit by a US aircraft carrier to South Korea so far this year.
Washington, which has had military bases in both South Korea and Japan for more than seven decades, encourages an even closer military rapprochement between both countries, despite resentments over the 35 years of Japanese occupation, until World War II. . Under the presidency of Joe Biden, joint military maneuvers between the three countries have increased, while their military budget - which has long made them two of the best clients of the US arms industry - is growing at a good pace.
Contributing to this is the pulse of Pyongyang, which this year has already carried out two tests of its new solid-fuel missile with supposedly intercontinental range - or at least capable of reaching Guam - Hwasong-18.
The partial suspension of the specific treaty with North Korea was approved urgently this Wednesday by the council of ministers in Seoul, under the leadership of Prime Minister Han Duck Soo. The warning to Pyongyang in this regard had been issued months ago. The text has already been signed by President Yoon, visiting the United Kingdom, where he plans to sign military and technological agreements with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
In any case, the military-tinged news followed by millions of South Koreans this Wednesday may be the incorporation into military service of one of the singers from BTS, a K-Pop group. "See you soon" this has come to say, in a country where the military is still mandatory for men and lasts between 18 and 21 months, to protect some Koreans from others.
