South Korea's rocket launch was suspended 7 minutes and 56 seconds before its scheduled time, local media reported Wednesday.

The Ministry of Education, Science and Technology and the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) said mission controllers decided to suspend the launch of the Korea Space Launch Vehicle-1 (KSLV-1), which was scheduled at local time 05:00 p.m. (0800 GMT).

"There was a problem in the automatic launch sequence that caused the launch to be called off," said KARI head Lee Joo-jin, without clarifying the exact reason of the stoppage.

He did not further go into details to identify whether the launch was a success or a failure.

He said that no launch will take place within the day and that a new date will be set after consultation with experts from Russia, which made the first stage rocket.

According to local media, fuel injected into the rocket has been dumped, while the launch pad has been erected, which together is hinting that the blast was unlikely to take place on Wednesday.

Release of already-injected fuel makes it impossible to launch the rocket within the day, only enabling a next blastoff at least 72 hours later, the media said.

The delay is the seventh time since the project started in 2002 under a cooperative arrangement with Russia.

(Xinhua News Agency August 19, 2009)