video transcript

ROUGH CUT (NO REPORTER NARRATION) STORY: North Korean state-run KRT broadcast video on Saturday that showed Kim Jong-un hosting a banquet for scientists to celebrate the "successful" rocket launch. KRT said Kim congratulated them on their great contribution to the successful launch of the second version of the satellite Kwangmyongsong-3 and said the banquet was held on Friday. His wife Ri Sol-ju, who is widely speculated to be pregnant, also attended the event. The rocket was launched on December 12 just before 10 a.m., defense officials in South Korea and Japan said, and was more successful than a rocket launched in April that flew for less than two minutes. The rocket, which North Korea says put a weather satellite into orbit, is seen by the United States, South Korea and Japan as a test of technology that could one day deliver a nuclear warhead capable of hitting targets as far away as the continental United States. A nuclear test would be the logical follow-up to the successful rocket launch, analysts said. The North's 2009 test came on May 25, a month after a rocket launch. North Korea is banned from developing nuclear and missile-related technology under U.N. resolutions, although Kim Jong-un, who took power a year ago, is believed to have continued the state's "military first" programs put in place by his late father, Kim Jong-il.