The Washington Post
TOKYO – North Korea appears to be building a new tunnel at its nuclear test site, new satellite pictures show, raising fears that the Pyongyang regime might be preparing to conduct a fourth atomic test.
Although there are no signs that a test is imminent, the construction does lead to one unpalatable conclusion, said Jeffrey Lewis, a respected nonproliferation expert at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey.
“Well, they’re not giving up their nuclear weapons,” said Lewis, who analyzed commercial satellite imagery in a new report for 38 North, a website dedicated to North Korea run by the U.S.-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies.
The new tunnel makes it “more likely that they will conduct a test in the coming year,” Lewis said, although this also depended on factors such as stocks of fissile material and the political situation.
Since 2006, North Korea has conducted three nuclear detonations at its Punggye-ri test site, in a mountainous area in the north of the country. The most recent was in February 2013, just over a year into Kim Jong Un’s reign and a month before Xi Jinping became China’s president, putting a bitter chill on relations with North Korea’s neighbor and reluctant patron.
Kim has repeatedly asserted North Korea’s status as a nuclear-armed country and has resolutely refused to return to multilateral talks aimed at persuading it to abandon its nuclear weapons program. But, to the surprise of many analysts, there has been no fourth test.
Recent satellite photos show that North Korea is excavating a new tunnel at the test site.
Significant construction, including of new covered buildings, began in April, Lewis wrote. By October and November, the satellites were showing an additional structure and what appear to be significant tailings, indicating excavation of a new tunnel is underway…
