Videos are circulating online of air raid sirens warning residents of the South Korean capital to evacuate after North Korea said its launch of a military satellite had failed.
In clips posted to social media, wailing air raid sirens can be heard in Seoul, with residents urged to seek shelter. In an excerpt of a news broadcast from South Korea, an air raid siren interrupts two television anchors live on air.
The alerts came after months of heightened tensions in the region, marking Pyongyang’s sixth attempt to put a satellite into orbit, according to Reuters. Japanese authorities also issued an emergency alert for the island of Okinawa, which was later lifted.
The U.S. said it “strongly condemns” the use of ballistic missile technology by North Korea, which U.S. National Security Council spokesperson, Adam Hodge, called a “brazen violation of multiple UN Security Council resolutions” that raises tensions and “risks destabilizing the security situation in the region and beyond.”
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On Wednesday, North Korean state media said an “accident occurred during the launch of military reconnaissance satellite,” launched shortly before 6.30 a.m. local time close to the country’s border with China, and the Yellow Sea.
A rocket, described as a “Chollima-1,” carrying the satellite plunged into the sea after a malfunction with one of its engines after the initial flight stage, the state Korean Central News Agency reported.
The country’s space agency will “thoroughly investigate the serious defects revealed in the satellite launch” and carry out a second attempt “as soon as possible,” the state news agency added.
A missile expert told the South Korean English-language daily, the Korea Herald, that a second launch attempt could take place “within a few weeks.”
Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said the launch was detected at 6.29 a.m. and what is believed to be part of the vehicle had been retrieved, according to South Korean media.
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Authorities in Seoul retracted the air alert in the capital shortly after it was issued at 6.41 a.m. local time, saying the emergency warning was “erroneous,” South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported. The correction was sent 20 minutes after the original alert, according to the Korea Herald.
Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon defended the use of the alert, saying there “can be no compromise on safety, and our principle is to respond in a manner that can be seen as excessive” according to Yonhap.
In Japan, the Prime Minister’s office tweeted that North Korea had launched a “suspected ballistic missile,” adding more updates would follow shortly.
In a subsequent message, the Japanese leader’s office said that as of 6.32 a.m. local time, authorities were working to provide more information to the public, secure its assets such as aircraft and “take all possible measures for precaution.”
“This launch involved technologies that are directly related to the DPRK intercontinental ballistic missile program,” the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command said in a statement, using an acronym to referring to North Korea’s title of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
“We are assessing the situation in close coordination with our allies and partners,” the U.S. military added.
Earlier this year, the U.S. and South Korea announced the largest-scale joint military drills for years, which Pyongyang called “nuclear blackmail.”
“Reckless military acts” by the U.S. and South Korea mean Pyongyang will “improve various defensive and offensive weapons and have the timetables for carrying out their development plan,” North Korea’s Central Military Commission said, cited in North Korean state media.