South Korea is keeping an advanced warship deployed in the East Sea to perform surveillance missions along with U.S. and Japanese destroyers even though North Korea already fired its long-range rocket, South Korea's top general said Monday.
South Korea dispatched a missile-tracking destroyer, Sejong the Great, to the East Sea last week after North Korea positioned its rocket at the Musudan-ri launch pad on its east coast, according to Yonhap News Agency.
The rocket blasted off Sunday but failed to float a satellite into orbit, South Korea and the U.S. say, though North Korea claimed the contrary through its state media.
Kim Tae-young, South Korea's chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that the South Korean destroyer remains in the East Sea and is continuing its operations to monitor the communist neighbor.
"There have been no changes with the destroyer's mission since the rocket launch," Kim told Yonhap News Agency.
South Korea, the U.S. and Japan believe North Korea feigned an attempt to put a satellite into space in an effort to test-fire an advanced ballistic missile capable of reaching Alaska and Hawaii.
Kim declined to give coordinates for the location in the Pacific Ocean where the final stages of the rocket splashed down, adding his country expected it would take "weeks" before independent identification is made.
Officials at the Ministry of National Defense said the Sejong the Great destroyer could not track the rocket beyond the 1,000-kilometer range of its radar. Media reports suggest the rocket fell into waters 2,700-3,200 kilometer away from the launch site.
"The U.S. is analyzing the location, but has yet to disclose the information," an official said, speaking on customary condition of anonymity.