South Korea "strongly" condemned North Korea's long-range rocket launch on Wednesday as a violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions, saying the communist nation will have to bear "grave responsibility" and face deeper isolation.

"This launch is a clear violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions ... and a threat to peace on the Korean Peninsula and around the world," Foreign Minister Kim Sung-hwan said, reading a government statement issued after an emergency meeting of the National Security Council.

"Our government strongly condemns North Korea pushing ahead with this provocation in disregard of repeated warnings and demands from the international community that the launch be called off.

North Korea will take grave responsibility for this," he said.

Kim also said the North will be "further isolated" from the international community, and urged the impoverished nation to use scarce resources to improve the lives of its people rather than wasting them on missile and nuclear programs.

North Korea launched the three-stage Unha-3 rocket at 9:51 a.m., with its first stage falling in the Yellow Sea, and what appears to be its second stage landing in waters near the Philippines, according to South Korean officials.

The communist nation has long claimed that it has the right to peaceful use of outer space and the rocket launch was aimed at putting a scientific satellite into orbit.

But South Korea, the United States, China and other countries have denounced the launch plan as a disguised ballistic missile test and a violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions that ban Pyongyang from any ballistic activity because it can be used to develop missiles capable of carrying nuclear weapons. (Yonhap News)