[Yang Nak-gyu's Defence Club] Second Day of Searching for North Korean Missile Debris

Complete Form Salvage Enables Satellite-Level Assessment

The military has launched a search operation to recover a space launch vehicle fired by North Korea. If the remaining debris is recovered, it is expected to provide an estimate of North Korea's satellite technology level.

[Image source=Yonhap News]

According to the Navy on the 1st, the military deployed several vessels, including the 3,500-ton surface ship rescue vessels Tongyeong (ATS-II) and Gwangyang (ATS-II), to the West Sea site for the second day, recovering floating debris presumed to be part of the North Korean space launch vehicle that fell the previous morning. North Korea launched one projectile southward from the Dongchang-ri area in North Pyongan Province at around 6:29 a.m. the previous day, but after an abnormal flight, it fell into the sea about 200 km west of Eocheongdo. The Tongyeong and Gwangyang ships involved in the operation are equipped with search and rescue equipment such as cranes, hull-mounted sonar (HMS), and remotely operated underwater vehicles (ROV), performing missions to tow and recover stranded or sunken ships.

The debris recovered by the military on the first day is a large cylindrical object presumed to be used to connect the first and second stage rockets. The military expects that if the satellite is recovered in a relatively intact form, based on the precedent of fully retrieving debris from the Unha-3 long-range rocket launched by North Korea in December 2012 that fell into the West Sea, it will be possible to gauge North Korea's satellite technology level. Currently, the operation to transfer the debris onto the ship is underway, and with favorable weather conditions, it is expected to proceed smoothly.

However, it is known that North Korea may have embedded a self-destruct function in the satellite in case of launch failure to prevent exposure of its technology level. The Unha-3 recovered in 2012 was found to contain South Korean-made semiconductors upon analysis. The charge-coupled device (CCD) camera, wires, and electromagnetic interference filters were Chinese-made, and parts from the former Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland were also present.

At that time, the Navy accurately detected 14 pieces of first-stage propulsion debris, including oxidizer tanks, fuel tanks, and engine remnants, which fell about 160 km west of Gunsan, and completed the debris recovery operation with seven deep-sea dives, an operation considered akin to 'finding a needle in the desert.'

Last November, when North Korea fired a surface-to-air SA-5 (Russian designation S-200) missile crossing the Northern Limit Line (NLL) in the East Sea for the first time since the division, the military recovered debris from the East Sea within five days. After completing the recovery and search operations, the military plans to send the collected materials to the Agency for Defense Development (ADD) and others to assess the performance of North Korean propulsion systems and military reconnaissance satellites.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.