SEOUL — Defying weeks of international pressure, North Korea launched a multistage rocket today, a move that the U.S. and its allies fear masked a test of its ability to deliver nuclear weapons.
Reaction was swift and harsh to the launch from a site in the country's northeast. The Obama administration, confronted by an early foreign-policy challenge, said the launch violated U.N. Security Council resolutions and that the U.S. would take steps to enforce the message that North Korea cannot threaten its neighbors with impunity.
"With this provocative act, North Korea has ignored its international obligations, rejected unequivocal calls for restraint and further isolated itself from the community of nations," President Obama said in a statement issued in Prague, Czech Republic, the latest stop on his European tour.
South Korea denounced the act as "reckless." Japan, angered that the rocket's trajectory took it over the northern part of its main island before landing in the Pacific Ocean, called for an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council.
South Korean government officials said a rocket was launched about 11:30 a.m. (about 7:30 p.m. PDT) on the second day of a five-day window that it had announced. Pyongyang had said it planned to put a communications satellite into space. But many analysts predicted that the launch would be a test of the regime's ability to deliver a warhead with the three-stage Taepodong 2, which is estimated to have a range of more than 4,000 miles. Some analysts say that with a light payload, it could reach the western U.S.
South Korea's Yonhap news agency quoted government officials in Seoul as saying that the rocket carried a satellite. That report was not immediately confirmed, nor was it clear whether it was a Taepodong 2 and if a satellite reached orbit.
A U.S. defense official said early today that preliminary data indicated the rocket failed to put a satellite into orbit.
"It did not appear to be a success," the official said, speaking of the assessment on condition of anonymity. "But we are still analyzing the data."
Japanese government officials said the rocket, launched from North Korea's Musudan-ri site, flew over two northern prefectures about seven minutes later. The first debris from the multistage rocket fell into the Sea of Japan about 160 miles west of Akita prefecture, they said. More debris fell about 13 minutes after launch into the Pacific Ocean about 800 miles east of Japan.
