3rd LD Writethru: S.Korea says DPRK launches long-range rocket

The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) on Sunday launched a long-range rocket as planned, South Korea's defense ministry said.

A Defense Ministry official told Xinhua on the phone that the DPRK fired a rocket at 9:30 a.m. (0030 GMT) from its Tongchang-ri launch station on the west coast.

South Korean military's surveillance assets detected the rocket just a minute after the launch, the official said, noting that the military identified the projectile as a missile at 9:32 a.m. local time.

To track a DPRK rocket after the launch, South Korean military had deployed various surveillance assets, including Aegis-equipped destroyer, ground-based Green Pine radar and Peace Eye airborne early warning and control aircraft.

South Korean Air Force's Peace Eye was the first detector of the DPRK rocket, and the Navy's two Aegis destroyers also found the DPRK-launched rocket.

Yonhap news agency reported that Pyongyang's rocket launch may have failed without elaborating on further details, but the defense ministry official told Xinhua that whether the rocket launch succeeded hasn't been determined yet. He said the military is now assessing the launch.

The first stage of the rocket fell on western waters of South Korea. Additional debris landed on waters near the country's southern resort island of Jeju. The rocket disappeared from radars of the South Korean military at 9:36 a.m.

South Korean President Park Geun-hye called an emergency meeting of the National Security Council (NSC) right after the rocket launch to discuss countermeasures, her office said.

South Korea, the United States and Japan jointly requested an emergency meeting of UN Security Council, which bans the DPRK from testing any of its ballistic missile technologies, Seoul's foreign ministry said. The meeting is scheduled to be held at 11 a.m. (New York time), according to the ministry.

There has been no damage reported from civil aircrafts and shipping, South Korea's transport ministry said.

The rocket launch came a day after the DPRK informed the International Maritime Organization of its revised plan to move up the launch window to Feb. 7-14 from the previous Feb. 8-25.

UN Security Council resolutions ban Pyongyang from firing a rocket by use of ballistic missile technology. Rockets and ballistic missiles have overlapping technologies.

The rocket launch came about a month after what it claimed was its first H-bomb test on Jan. 6. It was the fourth nuclear test by the DPRK following previous atomic bomb tests in 2006, 2009 and 2013 respectively. Enditem