SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea indicated on Monday that it was preparing to put a new satellite into orbit using a rocket that is widely seen as an intercontinental ballistic missile in the making.

“The world will clearly see a series of satellites of military-first Korea soaring into the sky,” the official news agency quoted the head of the country’s National Aerospace Development Administration as saying.

Officials and analysts in the region have speculated that the North will launch a long-range rocket with a satellite on board around Oct. 10, the 70th anniversary of the ruling Workers’ Party. The country’s leader, Kim Jong-un, has been seeking to build his prestige with advances in rocketry and missiles, they say.

North Korea has said its space program is peaceful, and the aerospace official quoted by the state news agency, Korean Central News Agency, said the satellite would gather data for weather forecasting. But after the country put a small satellite into orbit in December 2012, the United States and its allies worried that in the process, the North was learning how to build long-range ballistic missiles that could strike targets as far as the West Coast of the United States.