North Korean Satellite Is Most Likely Dead

“It’s spinning or tumbling, and we haven’t picked up any transmissions,” said Jonathan McDowell, a Harvard astronomer who tracks rocket launchings and space activity. “Those two things are most consistent with the satellite being entirely inactive at this point.”

North Korea’s state-run news media said nothing about the satellite’s dysfunction, focusing instead on the event the launching was supposed to honor: the somber first anniversary of the death of Kim Jong-il, the longtime leader. As part of the coverage, state television broadcast video of his daughter-in-law — her first public appearance in more than a month — that appeared to confirm that a new member of North Korea’s notoriously reclusive Kim dynasty is on its way.

The images showed Ri Sol-ju, the wife of Kim Jong-il’s son and successor, Kim Jong-un, dressed in a dark flowing dress and walking slowly beside her husband inside the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun, the mausoleum in Pyongyang, the capital, where Kim Jong-il and his father, Kim Il-sung, lie in state. Although she was wearing a high-waisted, loose-fit, traditional “hanbok” dress, and there was no official mention of pregnancy, South Korean media detected what they considered a visibly swollen belly. The South Korean news agency Yonhap quoted a government source as saying that birth was “imminent.”

State media has been describing the satellite launching as a triumphal achievement of the young leader, completed despite worldwide criticism and United Nations sanctions on the North’s ballistic missile program. On the day of the launching, the mission director, Kim Hye-jin, told reporters that the satellite was broadcasting in orbit “Song of Gen. Kim Il-sung” and “Song of Gen. Kim Jong-il.”

The satellite, about the size of a washing machine, reportedly carries an on-board camera to observe the earth. That mission requires the spacecraft to remain quite steady.

Dr. McDowell said tumbling would imply that on-board systems meant to control and stabilize the craft had failed.

He added that radio astronomers had picked up no signals from the satellite and that optical astronomers had observed it brightening and dimming as it slowly rotated through space end over end.

“It’s clear that the rocket part of this mission worked very well for the North Koreans,” Dr. McDowell said in an interview. “They ended up in the right orbit. But the preponderance of the evidence suggests that the satellite failed either during the ascent or shortly afterwards.”

North Korea fired the small satellite into orbit last Wednesday atop a long-range rocket, a first for the impoverished nation. The official Korean Central News Agency hailed it as demonstrating “indomitable spirit and massive national capabilities.”

Last week, rumors circulated in Washington that the satellite was malfunctioning. Astronomers who turned a variety of telescopes on the sky have now gathered evidence that supports that finding.

Greg Roberts, a retired professional astronomer who lives in Cape Town, South Africa, reported Sunday on an Internet site that he was able to observe the satellite flashing through repeated cycles that would brighten and dim.

The spacecraft, he added, “appears to be doing a regular tumble.” On Monday, he added that new observations showed the satellite reaching its maximum brightness roughly once every 16 seconds.

In an e-mail, Mr. Roberts cautioned that he still needed to make more observations to confirm the evident tumbling.

The glaring absence of any signals or other signs of life from the spacecraft suggests it is dormant or dead.

The radio silence stands in contrast to North Korea’s early wave of excited proclamations.

Robert Christy, a British radio astronomer who has tracked satellites for decades and runs an observers’ Internet site, said in an e-mail from England that for days after the launching he listened for the satellite but could hear nothing and found no plausible signals.

“I still wouldn’t rule out it turning up,” Mr. Christy said. But he noted that North Korean officials have already missed an opportunity to make “any real propaganda out of it transmitting.”

Ted Molczan, a sky watcher in Toronto who is also tracking the satellite, said tumbling would have little if any impact on the orbit’s decay and the satellite’s re-entry through the atmosphere, where the blistering heat of friction will eventually cause it to burn up.

“It’s going to be up there for at least a few years,” Mr. Molczan said. “The real question is whether the satellite is functioning. Right now, it looks like it’s rotating aimlessly.”

William J. Broad reported from New York, and Choe Sang-hun from Seoul, South Korea.

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With South Korean Election, Policy Toward North Will Change

But the question of how much aid and investment South Korea should offer the North, and under what conditions, has become a major point of contention, one that could create discord with Washington.

The neck-and-neck race pits Park Geun-hye, the candidate of President Lee Myung-bak’s conservative Saenuri Party, against Moon Jae-in, who represents the liberal Democratic United Party.

Their backgrounds are as different as those of any two Koreans could be. Ms. Park is the daughter of Park Chung-hee, who ruled South Korea with an iron fist from 1961 to 1979. Mr. Moon is a former student activist who was jailed in the 1970s for opposing Mr. Park’s dictatorship.

But both agree that Mr. Lee’s policy of backing international sanctions to compel North Korea to end its nuclear programs and refraining from dialogue with the North has failed to tame its hostility toward the South. North Korea’s successful launching of a three-stage rocket on Wednesday has not changed the candidates’ promises to provide more generous aid to the North and to try to hold talks with its new leader, Kim Jong-un.

“The launch doesn’t seem to be having much effect on the current presidential contest one way or the other,” said John Delury, a professor at Yonsei University in Seoul who is an expert on North Korea. Here in the South Korean capital, not far from the North Korean border, “most people don’t see this rocket launch as a security threat, for the simple reason that North Korea can use quicker and more effective short- and midrange capabilities to strike the South, if it ever came to that,” Mr. Delury said.

For the Obama administration, the timing of the transition of power in South Korea is problematic. After the rocket launching, American officials talked of imposing “Iran-like sanctions” on North Korea, suggesting curbs on investment and banking outside the country and on purchases of North Korean goods. Finding new sanctions that truly hurt will be difficult; the North is already one of the most penalized countries on earth.

But winning approval of those sanctions in the United Nations Security Council will be even more difficult if South Korea appears to be headed in the other direction. Susan E. Rice, the American ambassador to the United Nations, clashed on Wednesday with her Chinese counterpart over whether the rocket launching merited a response at all; the Chinese argued it did not. Marshaling support among United States allies will be almost impossible if a new South Korean president is announcing renewed initiatives.

“This could put us back to where we were in the Bush administration,” one American diplomat said, “where the White House was going in one direction, imposing sanctions, and a South Korean president was going in the other.”

President Obama and President Lee have pursued a policy of “strategic patience,” isolating and penalizing North Korea for its provocations and hoping that China would rein in its ally. China never did.

“The United States is more than willing to let South Korea take the lead on North Korea — as long as it is comfortable with the general direction,” said David Straub, deputy director at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University. “The Obama administration will only be willing to go so far unless and until Pyongyang signals a genuine willingness to negotiate away its nuclear and missile programs on reasonable terms.”

Mr. Lee’s liberal predecessors, Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun, pursued a “sunshine policy” of reconciliation and economic cooperation with North Korea from 1998 to 2008. Billions of dollars of South Korean investment, aid and goods flowed into the North to encourage it to shed its isolation and hostility, and to try to reduce the economic gap between the two Koreas and the cost of reunification in the future.

When the political pendulum swung toward Mr. Lee, who took office in 2008, he reversed the policy and said the North would need to give up its nuclear weapons if it wanted South Korean largess to continue. In the years that followed, the North cut off all official dialogue, conducted its second nuclear test, launched a long-range test missile, was accused of sinking a South Korean warship and fired an artillery barrage at a South Korean island.

“Lee Myung-bak’s policy did nothing to stop North Korea from expanding its nuclear capability or change its behavior — it only worsened the problem,” said Mr. Moon, who wants to revive the sunshine policy.

David E. Sanger contributed reporting from Washington.

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