Pres. Lee says rocket launch "half success," calls for renewed efforts

SEOUL, Aug. 25 (Yonhap) -- President Lee Myung-bak called Tuesday for renewed and redoubled efforts to advance the country's space technology, calling South Korea's failed first rocket launch a "half success."

"We can say it was half successful, though the satellite failed to enter orbit,"
Lee said in a Cabinet meeting that began shortly after the rocket launch at 5
p.m.
"We must realize our dream of becoming a leading country in space technology,
even if it takes an eighth attempt after seven failures or a ninth attempt after
eight failures," the president was quoted as saying by his spokesman, Lee
Dong-kwan.
The rocket, the Korea Space Launch Vehicle-1, successfully blasted off from its
launch pad at the Naro Space Center in the country's southwest, but was later
declared to have overshot its trajectory.
The president encouraged the researchers and scientists who contributed to
Tuesday's launch, asking them take the failure as a lesson for a next leap
forward.