South Korea's locally assembled space rocket, which lost contact only 137 seconds after the takeoff, crashed after reaching altitude of 70 km, Seoul's news channel YTN reported Thursday.
YTN pictures showed the rocket falling from the sky.
The two-stage satellite-carrier Naro-1, or the Korea Space Launch Vehicle-1 (KSLV-1), lifted off from the Naro Space Center in South Jeolla Province, about 485 km south of Seoul, at 5:01 p.m. local time (0801 GMT), Xinhua reported.
The launch of the 140-ton rocket, developed with the help of Russian experts, came a day after a technical problem with firefighting equipment delayed the initially planned blastoff. South Korea has put 502.5 billion won (404.5 million U.S. dollars) into developing the Naro-1.
Last year, a technical glitch botched up the first attempt at the rocket launch. A faulty fairing assembly prevented the rocket from putting the satellite into the orbit and the rocket veered off course.