Following the incident, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the chair of the U.S. House of Representative foreign affairs committee, said aptly, “The illusion that Kim Jong-un would be any less ruthless or provocative than his father and grandfather before him has gone up in smoke on the missile launch pad.”
The missile launch had its political ripples all across the world.
A spokesperson of Moon Jae-in, the liberal candidate in the South Korean presidential election scheduled next week, did not lose the opportunity and immediately blamed the current president of South Korea for the matter, and said it showed “national security incompetence.”
North Korea launched the rocket defying international warnings, and also defying China, which is its only ally. The White House condemned the “highly provocative act that threatens regional security.” Japan protested against the launch and condemned it immediately, while the South Korean President Lee Myung-bak called an emergency meeting of the national security council.
Japan’s Foreign Ministry has said that Tokyo has requested immediate consultations within the U.N. Security Council and the council would be holding a closed-door meeting on Wednesday.
Most countries across the world are of the opinion that the reason given by North Korea to launch the rocket and test it, that is to put a satellite in space, is a fake reason, and actually the exercise is designed to test the capabilities of its long range missile program to carry nuclear warheads.