South Korea was on Thursday preparing to commence its first homegrown space launch vehicle in the latest efforts to boost its space program and join the elite global space club.

The KSLV-II, also known as Nuri, is set to blast off from the Naro Space Center in the country's southern coastal village of Goheung at around 4 p.m., the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) said. The 200-tonne Nuri is intended to put a 1.5-tonne dummy satellite into orbit, a space launch vehicle technology that South Korea has been seeking to acquire for over10 years for its space program. If successful, the Nuri rocket will be South Korea's first space vehicle wholly designed and built in the country.

The planned launch comes amid worries over North Korea's test-firing of a new submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) on Tuesday, the latest in a series of missile launches by the North. On Thursday, North Korea's Foreign Ministry expressed concerns over nonsensical reaction from the US and the UN Security Council over Pyongyang's "rightful exercise of right to defense". Nuri's success or failure can be decided in around 30 minutes after lift-off, officials at KARI said. The success rate for newly developed rockets at the first attempt is 30 per cent to date, they added.

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