North Korea plans to launch a long-range rocket between Dec. 10 and 22, its state media said Saturday, prompting concern that the launch would undermine regional security and affect the upcoming presidential election in the South.

The North is expected to launch the rocket between 7 a.m. and noon, a Seoul official said on Sunday. The propellant of the first-stage of the multiple-stage rocket is to fall into the West Sea while that of the second-stage should drop in waters east of the Philippines, the official said.

The North has reportedly sent the “Notice to Airman” containing such information to Japan and other countries. As of press time, Pyongyang has yet to notify international air and maritime organizations of its launch plan.

Seoul immediately called on Pyongyang to scrap the plan, stressing that it would be a “grave provocation” disregarding the warnings of the international community.

The North’s Korean Committee for Space Technology issued a statement that its Unha-3 rocket carrying the Kwangmyongsong-3 “polar-orbiting observation” satellite would lift off from a launch site in Cheolsan, North Pyongan Province.

The widely expected announcement came eight months after Pyongyang’s failed rocket launch in April, which was intended to mark the centennial birthday of its late national founder and leader Kim Il-sung.

“We will blast off a working satellite that we have built based on our own strength and technology, to uphold the teaching left by great leader and comrade Kim Jong-il,” the committee said in the statement carried by the North’s Korean Central News Agency.

“Our scientists and technicians have completed preparations for the satellite launch through analyzing defects ― revealed during the April launch ― and deepening our work to enhance the credibility and accuracy of the satellite and the rocket.”

Seoul and Washington argue that the North has disguised missile tests as satellite launches. They believe the North having a more sophisticated, powerful delivery vehicle would increase its nuclear threat.

Last week, the allies began consulting over their coordinated response and the scope of sanctions against what they regard as another provocation by the North. Tokyo has ordered its self-defense force to prepare against the rocket.

Seoul has beefed up diplomacy to secure cooperation from other participants of the stalled multilateral denuclearization talks such as China and Russia, to pressure the North to cancel the launch plan.

South Korean President Lee Myung-bak warned that the North’s missile launch would not influence the presidential election slated for Dec. 19, underscoring that the North was now at a crossroads to choose between continued poverty with nuclear arms and prosperity without them.

“Pyongyang has always intervened in the elections in South Korea,” he said in an interview with the foreign and domestic news agencies released Sunday.

“In the 2007 presidential vote when I was a candidate and the parliamentary elections in April this year, the North intervened. But that only resulted in worsening the public awareness of the North.”

Seoul puts more weight to internal political factors within the North as part of the reasons for its push for the launch.

“The North may need some big event to placate the military and people, and strengthen internal unity. It also set the launch date around the first anniversary of Kim Jong-il’s death. So the launch could be part of materials to worship (the late leader),” a senior government official told reporters, declining to be named.

The dynastic ruler Kim Jong-un may be seeking a breakthrough to appease his people still facing poverty and suppression, experts said.

They also said that the decision to launch another rocket just eight months after the failed launch shows how nervous Kim was about his fledgling leadership. Pyongyang used to have an interval of at least three years between one launch and another. The botched lift-off in April follows the launches in 2009 and 2006.

Given the timing of the planned launch, Jeung Young-tae, senior research fellow at the Korea Institute for National Unification, said that Pyongyang appears to be sending a message both to Seoul and Washington.

“The launch may be a message to South Korean voters to choose between inter-Korean conflict and peace. It is tacitly saying that a South Korean president seeking exchanges and reconciliation with the North would create a more peaceful mood on the peninsula,” he said.

“To the Obama administration, which has won its reelection, the rocket may be a means to pressure it, implicitly warning that it would continue to refine and strengthen its missile capability unless the U.S. resumes dialogue with it.”

Nam Chang-hee, political science professor at Inha University, forecast that the Washington-Pyongyang relations would further worsen should the North press ahead with the launch.

“The launch will constitute a breach of U.N. Security Council resolutions. Thus, should it launch the rocket, Washington, thus, cannot condone it and would not reward bad behavior. It would not do something to risk undermining its global leadership,” he said.

“The North also may not scrap the plan as it does not care about what the outside world says. It also has some sort of a theocratic internal logic, which makes it difficult to retract what it publicly vowed to do.”

He added that China might feel unnerved about the North preparing for the launch as new Communist Party leader Xi Jinping seeks regional stability while consolidating his own power and tackling domestic challenges.

China’s Foreign Ministry stressed that it is concerned about a provocation that could undermine peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula.

By Song Sang-ho (sshluck@heraldcorp.com)