S. Korean Launch Raises Questions

'A Different Context'

"Their reaction and attitude towards South Korea's satellite launch will once again clearly prove whether the principle of equality exists or has collapsed," a spokesman for the North Korean Foreign Ministry told the country's official press agency.

Moon Tae-young, a deputy minister at South Korea's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, responded that any comparison between the two missile launches is "inappropriate." He noted that South Korea has pledged to abide by international norms governing the peaceful use of space and missile technology transfers, and has conducted its preparations transparently.

North Korea, in contrast, acted despite a 2006 order by the Security Council to refrain from ballistic-missile-related activities. It also has a nuclear arsenal that could effectively be used only with ballistic missiles, has shrouded its purported space program in secrecy, and has issued military threats against neighbors.

"It is a different context that North Korea operates in," said a U.S. official involved in proliferation policy, who requested anonymity in order to speak freely. The question is, "are they allies or friends, or people who have generally been belligerent?"

Such distinctions vex independent analysts such as Dennis M. Gormley, a senior fellow at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies. "This is a backdoor way of avoiding an agreement made in 2001" by Washington and Seoul to bar South Korea's development of long-range missiles that might heighten regional tensions, he said.

"We have a different way of looking at our friends and allies, but creating this differentiation in the end does not do us well. It creates the notion that we only have ground rules that apply in certain places," Gormley said.

Similarly, Henry Sokolski, executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, said: "If we wink at this nuclear-capable rocket launch . . . how in the world can we object to North Korean and Iranian tests without looking like hypocrites?"

Relaxing a Policy

Sokolski says Washington has been slowly relaxing a missile nonproliferation policy that led to sanctions or other pressures against South Africa, Australia, Israel, India, Brazil and Argentina. Besides the five permanent members of the Security Council, only Japan, India, Israel and Iran have successfully launched satellites. North Korea's April launch did not loft a satellite, according to U.S. officials.

Several experts said the administration faces a delicate balancing act in trying to avoid further regional tensions in the face of unconstrained North Korean missile tests and South Korea's work on at least four cruise missiles, including one capable of reaching much of southern China and Japan as well as all of North Korea.

"To an extent, there is [an] element of competition against North Korea in terms of acquiring technical advancement," said Kim Seung-Jo, chairman of the Korean Society for Aeronautical and Astronautical Science in Seoul. "But we don't want to create undesirable misunderstanding about our motivation, because we gain nothing by that."

Kim reported from Seoul. Staff writer Joby Warrick in Washington contributed to this report.