North Korea may be preparing for nuclear test soon, report says

xizhimen · Mar 27, 2022

North Korea may be preparing for nuclear test soon, report says

A satellite image shows an overview of new activity at the Punggye-ri nuclear test site in North Korea's North Hamgyong province on March 4. A report says the North could be preparing a "shortcut" that would allow it to quickly conduct its seventh nuclear test. | ©2022 MAXAR TECHNOLOGIES / VIA REUTERS

Mar 27, 2022

In a move that would cross a red line for the United States and its allies, North Korea appears to be making preparations at its main nuclear test site that would allow it to quickly conduct its seventh atomic test, a media report quoting South Korean government sources said Sunday.

Pyongyang appears to be working on a "shortcut" to a tunnel at its Punggye-ri underground test facility, apparently in an attempt to repair the site, which was shuttered in 2018, the Yonhap news agency reported, quoting unidentified sources in Seoul.

South Korea's military and intelligence authorities detected signs that the North was focusing on restoring Tunnel 3 in the mountainous northeastern area, the sources said.

"(The North) abruptly stopped its initial construction work to restore the entrance to Tunnel 3, and it is digging up the side (of the tunnel)," one source said. "In this way, it seems like it will be possible to restore (the facilities) in a month."

The Punggye-ri site was closed in 2018 – with some tunnels blown up – after leader Kim Jong Un announced a self-imposed moratorium on nuclear and long-range missile tests amid denuclearization talks with the U.S. Experts, however, have said the moves at the site were likely reversible and that testing could resume after weeks or months of work.

The site is home to four tunnels, two of which, Tunnels 1 and 2 – where the North carried out its previous nuclear tests – would be difficult to quickly restore, analysts say. Tunnels 3 and 4, however, could prove usable after repair work.

The latest report comes just weeks after South Korean officials delivered cryptic remarks on March 5 indicating that they would “even more closely” monitor the Punggye-ri site after its test of an apparent long-range missile component.

North Korea has not conducted a nuclear test in 4½ years, when it tested what it said was a thermonuclear weapon. Researchers have said that test was its most powerful explosion to date, with some estimating that it was equivalent to about 250 kilotons of TNT — an explosion 16 times the size of the bomb the U.S. detonated over Hiroshima.

Earlier this month, analysts said that they had detected “very early signs” of construction at the site, including the use of lumber that could be used to reinforce tunnels.

Kim hinted in January of a return to major weapons tests, telling party leaders that the North would “reconsider in an overall scale the trust-building measures that we took on our own initiative … and … promptly examine the issue of restarting all temporarily-suspended activities.”

Jeffrey Lewis, a nuclear expert with the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, California, involved in this month’s analysis of Punggye-ri, said the recent construction and repair work indicate that the North Korean leader may have made some sort of decision about the status of the test site.

“One possibility is that North Korea plans to bring the test site back to a state of readiness to resume nuclear explosive testing,” Jeffrey Lewis, a nuclear expert with the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, California, wrote the analysis.

Concerns have risen that Kim would order a return to nuclear testing after his regime launched a "new-type" intercontinental ballistic missile last week that Japan’s defense minister said was capable of traveling 15,000 kilometers, putting the entire U.S. within striking distance.

Although the North has claimed to have mastered building larger nuclear bombs, resuming nuclear testing at the Punggye-ri site would help the regime in its quest to build smaller battlefield nukes known as tactical weapons, which could be deployed on its growing number of shorter-range missiles that put Japan within striking distance.

Kim explicitly laid out a goal of developing “ultramodern tactical nuclear weapons” during a January 2021 ruling party congress.

With several key anniversaries looming on the North Korean calendar — including the 110th anniversary of the birth of his grandfather, Kim Il Sung, the country’s founder, on April 15 as well as the 90th anniversary of the creation of the Korean People's Army’s predecessor on April 25 — Kim could be looking to mark the dates with a nuclear test.