* North Korea to launch satellite between Dec. 10 and Dec.
22
* US condemns what would be second 2012 launch after April
failure
* S.Korea, facing elections, calls launch "grave
provocation"
SEOUL, Dec 1 (Reuters) - North Korea said it would carry out
its second rocket launch of 2012 as its youthful leader Kim
Jong-un flexes his muscles a year after his father's death, in a
move that Sou th Korea and the United States swiftly condemned as
a provocation.
North Korea's state news agency announced the decision to
launch another space satellite on Saturday, just a day after Kim
met a senior delegation from China's Communist Party in the
North Korean capital of Pyongyang.
China, under new leadership, is North Korea's only major
political backer and has continually urged peace on the Korean
peninsula, where the North and South remain technically at war
after an armistice, rather than a peace treaty, ended the
1950-53 conflict.
No comment on the planned launch was available from
Beijing's foreign ministry.
In Washington, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria
Nuland condemned the launch plan as a provocative threat to the
Asia-Pacific region that would violate United Nations
resolutions imposed on Pyongyang after past missile tests.
"A North Korean 'satellite' launch would be a highly
provocative act that threatens peace and security in the
region," sh e sa id in a written statement.
Pentagon spokesman George Little said , " North Korea must
abide by its international obligations under U.N. Security
Council resolutions that clearly articulate what it can and
cannot do with respect to missile technologies."
Seoul's foreign ministry called the move a "grave
provocation." Japan's Kyodo news agency said Prime Minister
Yoshihiko Noda had ordered ministries to be on alert for the
launch.
"North Korea wants to tell China that it is an independent
state by staging the rocket launch and it wants to see if the
United States will drop its hostile policies," said Chang
Yong-seok, a senior researcher at the Institute for Peace
Affairs at Seoul National University.
North Korea is banned from conducting missile or
nuclear-related activities under U.N. resolutions imposed after
earlier nuclear and missile tests. The country says its rockets
are used to put satellites into orbit for peaceful purposes, but
that assertion is not widely accepted outside of Pyongyang.
Washington and Seoul believe that the impoverished North is
testing long-range missile technology with the aim of developing
an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of carrying a
nuclear warhead.
Pyongyang's threats are aimed, in part, at winning
concessions and aid from Washington, analysts say.
POLITICS AND ANNIVERSARIES
The failed April rocket launch took place to celebrate the
100th anniversary of the birth of North Korea founder Kim Il
Sung and the latest test will take place close to the Dec. 17
date of the death of former leader Kim Jong-il.
It will also come as South Korea gears up for a Dec. 19
presidential election in a vote that pits a supporter of closer
engagement with Pyongyang against the daughter of South Korean
dictator Park Chung-hee.
The April test was condemned by the United Nations, although
taking action against the North is hard as China refuses to
endorse further sanctions against Pyongyang.
North Korea is already one of the most heavily sanctioned
states on earth thanks to its nuclear programme.
Pyongyang has few tools to pressure the outside world to
take it seriously due to its diplomatic isolation and its puny
economy.
The state that Kim Jong-un inherited last December after the
death of his father boasts a 1.2 million-member military, but
its population of 23 million, many malnourished, supports an
economy worth just $40 billion annually in purchasing power
parity terms, according to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.
"The North's calculation may be that they have little to
lose by going ahead with it at this point," said Baek Seung-joo
of the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses in Seoul.
Baek said the test planned for December would likely be no
more successful in launching a satellite than the April one that
crashed into the sea between China and North Korea after flying
just 120 km (75 miles).
"Kim Jong-un may be taking a big gamble trying to come back
from the humiliating failure in April and in the process trying
to raise the morale for the military," Baek said.
North Korea's space agency said on Saturday that it had
worked on "improving the reliability and precision of the
satellite and carrier rocket" since April's launch.