North Koreans celebrate rocket launch

Hundreds of thousands of North Korean soldiers and civilians have packed Pyongyang's main square to celebrate their nation's successful launch of a long-range rocket.

State television footage showed the crowd in Kim Il-sung Square standing in organised ranks on Friday as they cheered speeches by senior military, party and government officials hailing the success of Wednesday's launch and praising the country's young leader, Kim Jong-un.

Many of the civilians were in warm coats, and the soldiers in olive-green overcoats and Russian-style trappers' hats, as they pumped their fists and chanted "long live!", the state TV's hour-long broadcast showed, according to the AFP news agency.

"This was achieved thanks to the Great Marshall Kim Jong-un's endless loyalty, bravery and wisdom," said Jang Chol, president of the State Academy of Sciences.

Friday's rally came hours after state media published a statement by Kim Jong-un ordering further "satellite launches", despite the global outrage and UN condemnation triggered by Wednesday's launch.

Al Jazeera's Harry Fawcett, reporting from Seoul, the capital of neighbouring South Korea, said "all of these speeches were paying tribute to the three generations of leadership ... and importantly Kim Jong-un, the current leader".

The tone of the speeches, said our correspondent, buttressed "the position of Kim Jong-un as a technological breakthrough in his first year in power".

North Korea says it placed a satellite in orbit for peaceful research, but critics say the launch amounted to a banned ballistic missile test that marked a major advance for the communist state's nuclear weapons programme.

The launch has been condemned by neighbouring South Korea, the United States and the United Nations.

The United Nations Security Council held emergency talks on Wednesday after the North, already under international sanctions for nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009, ignored pleas from friends and foes and went ahead with the launch.

The launch has sparked fears among Western nations that nuclear-armed North Korea is now a step closer to firing intercontinental ballistic missiles across the planet.

The UN Security Council has condemned the move and called for tougher sanctions.

Condemning Wednesday's launch, the US state department said Kim had the chance as new leader "to take his country back into the 21st century" but instead was making the "wrong choices".

Unfazed by the criticism, North Korean state media said Kim, who is in his late 20s, had personally signed off on the rocket launch and had declared his regime's "unshakable stand" that the programme will continue.

Kim stressed the need "to launch satellites in the future... to develop the country's science, technology and economy", according to the North's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) as it gave new details of the launch.

The "dear respected Marshal" visited mission control an hour before the rocket took off on Wednesday morning and praised the "ardent loyalty and patriotic devotion" of the technical team, KCNA said in the report early Friday.

From~http://www.aljazeera.com/news/asia-pacific/2012/12/2012121442823441931.html

What is the western fears really about? Communism? lack of power in the situation? War i guess? This is the poorest country in Asia and yet it stands up to us, like we are nothing

Slave labour, the militarisation of their economy while millions starve to death, very restricted freedom and information, brainwashing, state worship... the list goes on.

they are very bad things, but they are not a threat to us in any way. 

Yeah... North Korea runs more like a cult then a country...

and now they have long ranged missles and nuclear weapons.

Cults can often find ways to not only not care about self perservation but want to cause as much havoc as possible before they go out.

Oh, Agreed. They pose no real threat... it's kinda ridiculous how they're portrayed as this global military power in some media.

They are a threat to money (South Korea). If US lost South Korea as a trading partner then they would lose ground in the war of economies with China. More importantly if North Korea gained South Korea they would gain a lot.

Every thing about North Korea is ridiculous, it might as well be treated like that. But without china, NK is gone, it became crippled when the USSR collapsed

Tend to disagree on that one. North Korea are people too. We can't really know how deeply the state-worship goes, due to preference falsification and the fact that it's impossible to get reliable information out of the country anyway, but at the end of the day they'll want self-preservation just like anyone else.

They'll only go off the deep end if they sense that the end is imminent, potentially going into scorched-earth mode which could do a tremendous amount of damage to South Korea and likely a few hits on Japan as well.

Well they spend there whole grows income on their military when 3/4 of the country is living in poverty.

It probably has to do with "stability" - yet another completely phrase like "Change" or "Yes we can" that nobody ever questions despite being completely meaningless, because everyone actually believes he knows exactly how it is meant.