It’s a satellite, just a satellite

North Korea is playing its funny games again.

North Korea launched a long-range rocket on Sunday carrying what it has said is a satellite, South Korea’s defense ministry said, in defiance of United Nations sanctions barring it from using ballistic missile technology.

The rocket was launched at 9:30 a.m. Sunday local time (7:30 p.m. ET), and South Korea was tacking it in flight, a South Korean military official said. “We have no information about any missile parts yet,” the official said.

A U.S. Defense official said the rocket was launched on a southern path over the Yellow Sea, and the trajectory indicated the rocket posed no threat to the U.S. or its allies. The launch vehicle appears to have reached space, the official said.

I know someone who’s underneath that path.

North Korea had notified U.N. agencies that it planned to launch a rocket carrying an Earth observation satellite, triggering opposition from governments that see it as a long-range missile test.

Intercontinental ballistic missiles designed to deliver nuclear warheads are launched into sub-orbital space to reach distant targets.

North Korea likes to throw things up in the air too you know. It’s totally unfair to tell it not to.

Updating to add the NHK report:

The Japanese government says North Korea launched what’s widely believed to be a long-range ballistic missile on Sunday morning.

Officials said they’ve confirmed that one projectile was fired from the North Korean western coast heading south at around 9:31 AM Japan time.

They said the object split into 5 parts. One part fell into the Yellow Sea, about 150 kilometers west of the Korean Peninsula. Two others landed in the East China Sea, about 250 kilometers southwest of the peninsula.

They estimate another part flew through Japanese airspace over Okinawa and dropped in the Pacific Ocean, about 2,000 kilometers south of Japan.

So that’s just great.