North Korea is handing out free uniforms to all students in the communist state to celebrate the 100th birthday of its deceased founder Kim Il-Sung, Pyongyang said Saturday.

The official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said free uniforms were being distributed to all students of elementary, middle and high schools and universities to mark the "Day of Sun" on Sunday.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Friday asked her Chinese counterpart to convey U.S. concern to Beijing's ally North Korea after its defiant but unsuccessful rocket launch.

Clinton, who was heading Friday to a summit in Colombia, spoke by telephone with Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi as she sought a "unified way to speak out and condemn this action," State Department spokesman Mark Toner said.

Russia, China and India on Friday jointly called all parties in the standoff over North Korea to show restraint after the reclusive state's failed rocket launch sparked global concern.

"We are convinced that the reaction to these challenges needs to be exclusively diplomatic and political," Lavrov said alongside his Chinese and Indian counterparts after a meeting in Moscow.

North Korea's much-anticipated rocket launch ended quickly in an embarrassing failure early Friday, splintering into pieces over the Yellow Sea soon after takeoff.

Within minutes of the early morning launch, the U.S. and South Korea declared it a failure. North Korea acknowledged that hours later in an announcement broadcast on state TV, saying the satellite had failed to enter into orbit.

North Korea's five-day window to launch a rocket opened Thursday with Asian countries on alert, as Washington told G8 world powers that the communist state was in flagrant violation of a U.N. ban.

The communist state has said it will launch the rocket between Thursday and Monday, most likely between 2200 GMT and 0300 GMT, to mark Sunday's centenary of the birth of its founding leader Kim Il-Sung.

Engineers are pumping fuel into a rocket that is set to carry a satellite into space, officials at the North Korean space agency's central command center said Wednesday, showing reporters a live feed of the west coast launch pad.

The live images of the Sohae site showed most of the Unha-3 rocket covered with a green tarp. The Kwangmyongsong-3 earth observation satellite, which was not visible in the feed, has been mounted and is draped with the tarp to protect it from the wind, Paek Chang Ho, chief of the General Launch Command Center, told reporters.

South Korea vowed Tuesday to take stern measures if North Korea goes ahead with its planned rocket launch in defiance of international condemnation.

The South's unification ministry, which handles cross-border relations, said the impoverished communist state would face international sanctions and further isolation because of its "provocative act.”

North Korea's long-range rocket is on its launch platform, Agence France Presse reporters said Sunday, as the regime again insisted it was to send a peaceful satellite and not a missile.

The usually secretive North organized an unprecedented visit for foreign reporters to Tongchang-ri space center in an effort to show its Unha-3 rocket is not a disguised ballistic missile, as claimed by the U.S. and its allies.

The foreign ministers of China, Japan and South Korea met Sunday in the Chinese city of Ningbo for talks on regional security and cooperation days ahead of a planned North Korean rocket launch.

Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi, Japan's Koichiro Gemba, and South Korea's Kim Sung-Hwan posed for photographers before starting talks in the eastern city near Shanghai.

Japan has deployed missile batteries in Tokyo and dispatched destroyers carrying interceptor missiles as it boosts its defenses against a planned North Korean rocket launch this month.

Pyongyang says it will launch a satellite for peaceful scientific research between April 12 and 16 to mark the 100th anniversary on April 15 of the birth of founding leader Kim Il-Sung.