Earlier on Tuesday, a spokesman from North Korea's Committee on Aerospace Technologies said preparations were underway on the eastern coast of the country to launch a telecommunications satellite, though no date was named.
"Any rocket with a range of over 300 kilometers [185 miles] may be considered ballistic," Li Gyu Hyen said. "Therefore, if North Korea launches a carrier rocket with a satellite, it would be considered a breach of the UN Security Council resolution."
Intelligence sources earlier said North Korea was probably preparing to fire a long-range Taepodong-2 missile from the newly constructed Musudan-ri launch pad on the country's northeast coast.
When asked if Seoul would bring sanctions against Pyongyang if it were to launch the satellite, Li said that he "hoped that it would not come to that."
Pyongyang first tested a long-range missile in 1998, when it launched a Taepodong-1 over northern Japan and claimed that it carried a domestically-developed satellite.
In 2002, Pyongyang and Tokyo agreed to a moratorium on missile tests, but the secretive regime has continued research on ballistic missile technology.
In 2005, Pyongyang announced that it had nuclear weapons and in July 2006 test-launched a Taepodong-2 long-range missile and also staged an underground test of a nuclear device. On July 15, 2006, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 1695, which forbids North Korea to develop ballistic missiles.
The Taepodong-2 reportedly has a maximum range of 6,700 kilometers (4,190 miles), which would make it capable of hitting the U.S. states of Alaska and Hawaii, as well as South Korea and Japan.
Experts believe the impoverished country is not capable of developing a domestic space program and the planned rocket launch was simply an attempt to draw the attention of U.S. President Barack Obama's new administration to the issue of the stalled six-party talks on its controversial nuclear program.
The six-nation talks, involving North Korea, South Korea, Russia, Japan, China and the United States, were launched in 2003 after Pyongyang withdrew from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
