North Korea says its new spy satellite photographed White House and Pentagon

After decades of satellite surveillance by foreign governments and analysts, North Korea has sent its first spy satellite on a global orbit with a message to the world: we can watch you too.

On Tuesday, North Korean state media said leader Kim Jong Un had reviewed spy satellite photos of the White House, Pentagon, and U.S. aircraft carriers at the naval base of Norfolk.

North Korea last week successfully launched its first reconnaissance satellite, which it has said was designed to monitor U.S. and South Korean military movements.

Since then, state media has reported the satellite photographed cities and military bases in South Korea, Guam and Italy, in addition to the U.S. capital.

“Remember when you got that toy you always wanted at Xmas and were so excited you wanted to tell everyone about it?” Chad O’Carroll, founder of the North Korea-focused website NK News, said of the state media reports in a post on X.

So far, Pyongyang has not released any imagery, leaving analysts and foreign governments to debate how capable the new satellite actually is.

South Korea, which said Tuesday the Nov. 30 launch date for its own first spy satellite on a U.S. Falcon 9 rocket would be delayed by weather, has said the North’s satellite capabilities could not be verified.

There is no reason to doubt that the satellite could see the large areas or warships North Korea claimed it could, as even a medium-resolution camera could offer Pyongyang that capability, said Dave Schmerler, a satellite imagery expert at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS).

“But how useful those images are depends on what they want to use them for,” he said.