A spokesman for North Korea's Ministry of National Defense issued a statement on December 2 announcing that any form of aggression against North Korea's satellites, such as jamming, would be considered a declaration of war on North Korea, KCNA reported. The DPRK side also said that if the US side attempts to interfere in the DPRK's space activities, they will consider reducing or destroying the survivability of US reconnaissance satellites. This is a response to the US Space Force's problem with North Korean reconnaissance satellites.
In response, the U.S. Space Force said that they can adopt a variety of reversible or irreversible methods to stop the space activities of the "enemy" from orbit, ground, and cyber. The DPRK interpreted this as a signal that the United States might take a military strike against the DPRK's reconnaissance satellites, which it regarded as a challenge to the DPRK's sovereignty.
Therefore, the DPRK has issued a strong warning to the US side and even demonstrated its determination not to hesitate to engage in a space conflict with the US side. If the United States and North Korea do have a space war, North Korea is not powerless to fight back. The Center for Strategic and International Studies, a U.S. think tank, assessed North Korea's space warfare capabilities in its "Space Threat Assessment" report.
They divide space countermeasures** into four categories: kinetic damage (ground station attack, direct descent anti-satellite, co-orbit anti-satellite), non-kinetic damage (high-altitude nuclear explosion, laser dazzle or blinding, high-power laser, high-power microwave), electronic attack (uplink jamming, downlink jamming, spoofing), and cyber attack (data exchange or surveillance, data corruption, loss of control).
According to the report's analysis, North Korea has not made significant progress in kinetic and non-kinetic space confrontation in recent years, but it has strong electronic warfare capabilities and cyber attack capabilities, and can play a role in space confrontation. For example, in April 2020, North Korea announced the deployment of a new GPS jamming device to counter South Korea.
Commercial radio frequencies and civilian GPS signals have suffered from anomalies in some areas, and North Korean cyber forces are considered a greater threat to the United States than Russia. They could launch cyberattacks that threaten U.S. space systems and ground stations. In addition, North Korea is capable of creating debris in space orbit that threatens the operation of American satellites.
Recently, North Korea successfully launched a military reconnaissance satellite, which makes their threat even more realistic. The United States sees North Korean satellites as a threat, which reflects their hegemony and double-standard thinking. South Korea launched its first military reconnaissance satellite on December 1 using a SpaceX rocket, while the United States, South Korea, Japan, and Australia also announced that they would impose unilateral sanctions on North Korean personnel.
The reason given by the United States and South Korea is to deal with the so-called "North Korean space threat", but the double standard of North Korea's satellite launch is also considered a "threat" and is subject to sanctions, while South Korea's satellite launch is helped by the United States, which is obviously neither reasonable nor legal.
With the support of the United States, the Korean Peninsula has begun a space arms race, which will have a far-reaching impact on the situation on the Peninsula and regional peace, and the international community needs to be highly vigilant against such a posture.