SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea has moved a rocket to a northwestern site in preparation for a launch next month, South Korean officials said Sunday, as Pyongyang pushes ahead with a plan that Washington has called a cover for testing long-range missiles.
President Barack Obama and South Korean President Lee Myung-bak urged North Korea to immediately stop its launch plans, warning in Seoul that they would deal sternly with any provocation. The move would jeopardize a deal in which the U.S. would ship food to the North in exchange for a nuclear freeze, Obama said.
“North Korea will achieve nothing by threats or provocations,” Obama said during a news conference Sunday with Lee.
“Bad behavior will not be rewarded. There had been a pattern, I think, for decades in which North Korea thought if they had acted provocatively, then somehow they would be bribed into ceasing and desisting acting provocatively.”
Earlier Sunday, Obama visited the tense, heavily armed border that divides the Koreas, six decades after the Korean War ended with a cease-fire that leaves the peninsula technically at war.
North Korea’s launch preparations are expected to dominate high-level sideline discussions at an international nuclear-security summit in Seoul set for today and Tuesday that Obama and other world leaders are attending. The launch preparations come as North Koreans and new leader Kim Jong Un mark 100 days since the death of Kim’s father, Kim Jong Il.
Seoul warned this morning at the summit that it might shoot down the North Korean rocket if it strays into South Korean territory.
“We are studying measures such as tracking and shooting down [parts] of a North Korean missile in case they stray out of their normal trajectory” and violate South Korean territory, said Yoon Won-shik, a vice spokesman at the Defense Ministry.
Japan also is preparing to deploy land- and sea-based interceptor missiles and is planning to issue an order to troops to shoot down the rocket if it is deemed a threat or violates Japanese airspace.
In northwestern North Korea, the main body of a long range rocket was transported to a building in the village of Tongchang-ri in North Phyongan province, officials said Sunday, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with department rules.
The Tongchang-ri launch site is about 35 miles from the Chinese border city of Dandong, across the Yalu River from North Korea. Analysts describe it as a new, more sophisticated site that would allow the North to fire the rocket from the west coast to avoid sending it over other countries.
North Korea says it is planning to launch a satellite into space in a scientific endeavor. The launch is set for sometime around celebrations marking the 100th anniversary of the April 15 birth of North Korea’s late President Kim Il Sung, who was Kim Jong Il’s father and the current leader’s grandfather.
The launch, however, violates “a U.S.-North Korea deal and is a provocative act that poses a threat to international peace and security,” Lee said.
Under the agreement settled last month between Washington and Pyongyang, considered a breakthrough at the time, the United States would ship food to the impoverished North in exchange for a moratorium on missile and nuclear tests.
Washington has said North Korea’s rocket launches are meant to test delivery systems for long-range missiles it hopes to mount with nuclear weapons that could reach Alaska and beyond.
“President Obama and I agreed to continue to strengthen the Korea-U.S. combined defense posture and sternly deal with any provocation and threat by North Korea,” Lee said.
The nuclear summit follows up on one held two years ago in Washington and is meant to find ways to keep nuclear weapons and material from getting in the hands of terrorists.
North Koreans, meanwhile, paid their respects to Kim Jong Il, with tens of thousands gathering in Pyongyang’s central square.
Kim Jong Un presided over a memorial service and gun salute as North Koreans across the country observed a noon moment of silence in Kim Jong Il’s memory. Citizens and soldiers lined up in rows, bowing their heads before a large portrait of Kim Jong Il flanked with wreaths of white flowers.
Information for this article was contributed by Pak Won Il, Mari Yamaguchi, Ben Feller, Anne Gearan and Jean H. Lee of The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 5 on 03/26/2012