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 By Poornima WEERASEKARA, with Sunghee Hwang in Seoul Beijing (AFP) May 22, 2018
Foreign journalists headed to North Korea on Tuesday to watch the promised destruction of its nuclear test site, a move seen as a goodwill gesture before a planned summit with the United States. Reporters from China, the US and Russia departed on a charter flight from Beijing, according to Chinese state broadcaster CGTN which is part of the contingent. The group will cover the demolition of the Punggye-ri nuclear testing site inside a mountain in the northeast of the country, which is scheduled to take place between Wednesday to Friday, depending on the weather. Agence France-Presse is one of a number of major media organisations not invited to cover the event. Pyongyang announced earlier this month that it planned to "completely" destroy the facility by blowing up the test site's access tunnels, a move welcomed by Washington and Seoul. The decision came after North Korean leader Kim Jong Un declared the country's nuclear force complete and said it had no further need for the complex Experts are divided over whether the move will render the site useless -- previous similar gestures have been rapidly reversed when the international mood soured. "Frankly a nuclear test site can be easily reassembled," Kim Hyun-wook, an expert at the Korea National Diplomatic Academy, told AFP. "But still, by dismantling it, North Korea is showing its willingness to not conduct nuclear tests at least for a while and signaling it has sufficient number of nuclear weapons," he added. Yang Moo-jin, from the University of North Korean Studies, said it was significant Pyongyang wasn't using the site's destruction as a "bargaining chip" with the United States ahead of the planned June 12 summit in Singapore between Kim and US President Donald Trump. "This move testifies sincerity in the North's commitment to defusing tension through negotiations," he said. - Diplomatic ups and downs - Punggye-ri has been the site of all six of the North's nuclear tests, the latest and by far the most powerful in September last year, which Pyongyang said was an H-bomb. Dialogue brokered by South Korea has seen US-North Korea relations go from trading personal insults and threats of war after that test to planning for a summit. But the meeting has already hit diplomatic bumps. Washington says it wants to see the "complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearisation" of the North. Pyongyang abruptly threatened to pull out of the summit last week and cancelled talks with the South, accusing Washington of cornering it with a unilateral demand for denuclearisation. The hardened rhetoric left US officials scrambling to work out whether the summit would take place. South Korea's president Moon Jae-in flew to Washington this week and will meet Trump later Tuesday in an attempt to put the detente back on track. Observers will be watching the nuclear test site destruction ceremony closely for any clues to the North's mood. Pyongyang previously said South Korean journalists would be allowed to attend this week's ceremony. But the North refused at the last minute to accept a list of South Korean journalists. Sceptics warn that Pyongyang has yet to make any public commitment to give up its arsenal and has a history of going back on its word. In 2008 the regime blew up a cooling tower of its atomic reactor at Yongbyon, the facility that produced the plutonium that allowed North Korea to carry out its first successful nuclear test. That ceremony was also held with much fanfare, complete with international invited journalists, and was heralded as a mark of Pyongyang's commitment to denuclearisation talks. The following day then President George W. Bush lifted some sanctions. But when talks collapsed the Yongbyon cooling tower was quickly rebuilt and the reactor restarted. In the intervening years, with diplomacy going nowhere, North Korea went on to test five more nuclear devices and develop missiles it said was capable of reaching the United States.
The nuclear test site North Korea plans to destroy The Punggye-ri test site, located beneath a mountain in the country's northeast, hosted all six nuclear tests Pyongyang has conducted -- most recently last September. Earlier this month the North announced it would blow up the site's access tunnels between May 23-25 in front of invited foreign media. The announcement came as the diplomatic push for Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons gathered pace with an unprecedented summit between Kim and US President Donald Trump announced for June 12 in Singapore. But both sides have since cast doubt on whether that meeting will take place. - Ideal environment - The site is located deep inside mountains in the northeastern North Hamgyong province, which borders China. Surrounded by high, craggy peaks and carved deep into a granite mountain more than 2,000 metres (6,500 feet) high, the test site is said to be an ideal venue to withstand the huge forces unleashed by nuclear blasts. The site's location only became known in 2006 when the North conducted its first nuclear test under Kim's late father Kim Jong Il. Activities have been closely watched through satellite imagery since then. Tunnels can be seen entering the site from different directions. The first test was staged in the eastern tunnel, the second and third in the western tunnel and the remainder in the northern tunnel, according to intelligence authorities. - Powerful blast - Tests staged at the site have demonstrated the country's rapid progress in its nuclear programme -- especially since Kim took power in 2011 and oversaw four atomic tests in only six years. The country's first test was largely seen as a failure and produced an estimated yield of only about one kiloton, compared to as much as 250 kilotons in the sixth -- an explosion 16 times more powerful than the US atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. But Punggye-ri's proximity to China has become a source of concern for Beijing, as the tremor from the sixth test was felt across the border and prompted many residents to flee their homes in panic. - Collapse claims - The growing impact of the blasts raised safety concerns, with some Chinese scientists warning that the site could pose a major radioactive threat to the wider region. A recent study by seismologists at the University of Science and Technology of China suggested rock had collapsed under the Mantap peak, making it unusable. Kim himself has disputed those claims in conversations with his South Korean counterpart Moon Jae-In. "If they come and see, they will understand that there are two bigger tunnels than the existing test facilities and that they are in a very good condition," Kim said, according to comments released by the South. - Empty gesture? - Sceptics have said the move to destroy the site is an empty concession by Kim as the site is already suffering from "tired mountain syndrome" and may be obsolete. Others say North Korea has learned all it needs from the nuclear tests conducted there. "They already collected the necessary data through six nuclear tests and unless they discard that data, there are suspicions over how significant the dismantling of a nuclear test site that has already run its course is," said Go Myong-Hyun, an analyst at the Asan Institute of Policy Studies. But Jeffrey Lewis of the Middlebury Institute of Strategic Studies says there is "no basis" to conclude Punggye-ri is no longer usable and the promised closure is "not a case of passing off damaged goods". - Radiation fears - The North has long claimed that its nuclear tests posed no environmental threats, saying there was "no radioactive leak" after conducting tests. But some South Korean and Japanese media reported that workers at the site or residents from the area suffered from radioactive exposure and symptoms including cancer and the births of deformed babies, citing the North's defectors and researchers. Such concerns prompted Seoul's unification ministry to run medical checkups on 30 defectors who hailed from the region for potential radioactive exposure last year. Four of them -- from the county of Kilju that includes Punggye-ri -- showed symptoms that could be attributed to radiation exposure, but researchers involved in the study said they could not conclude that the health problems had been caused by a nuclear test.
Two North Koreans defect to South: Yonhap Seoul (AFP) May 19, 2018 Two North Koreans defected to the South across the Yellow Sea on Saturday, a South Korean news report said, citing a government source. "A small boat was spotted in waters off the north of Baengnyeong Island" near the inter-Korean border, the source told Yonhap news agency. "They expressed willingness to defect," he said. A Korea Coast Guard official said relevant authorities were investigating the case, declining to give details. One of the men was initially identified as a soldier due ... read more
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