South Korea protests North's rocket launch

South Koreans protesters condemn North Korea's rocket launch and leader Kim Jong-un.

About 200 South Korean demonstrators protested against North Korea on Friday, denouncing the reclusive state's leader Kim Jong-un, saying the launch is a disguised missile test.

North Korea, which says the rocket is needed to put a satellite into orbit, publicly admitted that it had not entered orbit - it apparently crashed into the Yellow Sea.

The admission is a highly unusual move for the North which still claims success with a 2009 satellite that others say failed. The failure is the first major and very public challenge for the third of the Kim dynasty to rule North Korea just months into the leadership of a man believed to be in his late 20s.

During the protest South Korean activists, along with North Korean defectors living in Seoul, "launched" a mock missile which bore a photograph of Kim Jong-un.

Protesters also slashed and burned a North Korean flag.

The launch of the Unha-3 rocket, which North Korea says will put a weather satellite into space, breaches U.N. sanctions imposed to stop the country developing a missile that could carry a nuclear warhead.

The two Koreas are divided by the world's most militarised border and remain technically at war after an armistice ended the Korean War in 1953.