ROUGH CUT (NO REPORTER NARRATION)<br/> <br />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.<br/> <br />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.<br/> <br />His wife Ri Sol-ju, who is widely speculated to be pregnant, also attended the event.<br/> <br />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.<br/> <br />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.<br/> <br />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.<br/> <br />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.
