South Korea’s military said on Friday it had successfully retrieved a large chunk of a crashed North Korean space rocket from the sea bed after 15 days of complex salvage operations. North Korea attempted to put its first military spy satellite into orbit on May 31, but the projectile and its payload crashed into the sea shortly after launch due to what Pyongyang said was a rocket failure. After deploying a fleet of naval rescue ships and minesweepers plus dozens of deep-sea divers, Seoul’s military said it had managed to salvage what appeared to be the main body of the rocket late Thursday from the Yellow Sea. “The salvaged object is scheduled to be analysed in detail by specialised institutions such as the national agency for defense development,” the Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement. The wreckage was pulled from the sea bed at a depth of about 75 metres (250 feet) in waters about 200 kilometres (125 miles) southwest of Eocheong Island, it added.