Another ICBM test may be in near future, source says

Satellite image of the Punggye-ri nuclear test site in North Korea taken on March 4 shows recent activities. The image was provided by Arms Control Wonk. [NEWS1]

Pyongyang may be planning more intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) tests for as early as sometime this week, according to a source.

“We have detected signs that North Korea will launch additional missiles in the vicinity of Pyongyang Sunan Airport, where it recently launched [an ICBM],” a senior-ranking government official told the JoongAng Ilbo on Sunday. “They are preparing for a launch that can happen any minute, and South Korean and U.S. authorities are monitoring the possibility of a launch that can happen as early as sometime this week.”

Among its flurry of weapons tests this year, with seven in January alone, two tests — on Feb. 27 and March 5 — were touted by the regime as satellite development tests.

They were later confirmed by Washington and Seoul to have been experimental launches for a new ICBM. Washington placed fresh sanctions Friday on two Russian individuals and three entities for enabling North Korea's weapons program.

Under successive United Nations Security Council resolutions, the North is prohibited from conducting tests of ballistic missile technology. Satellite launches are also prohibited as they employ the same technology.

North Korea had agreed to a self-imposed moratorium on nuclear and longer range missile testing in late 2017. The regime in January, however, suggested an end to the moratorium.

The North’s resumption of weapons tests has been coupled with activities at its major nuclear test site.

Activities believed to be the restoration of part of a tunnel that was blown up at the North's Punggye-ri nuclear test site have been detected recently, according to the Ministry of National Defense.

Punggye-ri in North Hamgyong Province is the site of six nuclear tests from 2006 to 2017.

“Recently, at the Punggye-ri nuclear test site in North Korea, an unknown activity presumed to be the restoration of part of a tunnel that was blown up on May 24, 2018, was identified,” the ministry told a group of reporters on Friday. “The authorities of the Republic of Korea and the United States are closely monitoring related activities in close cooperation.”

Satellite images released last week by the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies showed signs of construction of new buildings and repairs of existing buildings at the Punggye-ri nuclear test site.

North Korea demolished its Punggye-ri nuclear test site in May 2018 in the presence of reporters from South Korea, China, Russia, Britain and the United States.

The demolition of the nuclear testing site was seen as a show of North Korea’s sincerity toward denuclearization as it planned the first summit between then-U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, which took place in June 2018.

But questions were raised by experts including those at the UN on whether the site’s tunnels stood intact.

The test site has four main tunnels, one of which was the site for the North’s first nuclear test in 2006, and another the site for the other five through 2017.

It was the other two main tunnels’ entrances that were destroyed in May 2018. Whether the tunnels themselves were destroyed could not be confirmed visibly.

Joseph Bermudez, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank, told Radio Free Asia on Friday that it may take just “three to six months” to rebuild the tunnels at the site, had their destructions in 2018 been only partial.

According to military sources, the tunnels at the site spread out horizontally for some hundreds of meters, before rounding in a curve at the end, like a fish-hook. The shape is intended to ensure the shock of a nuclear test stays within the tunnel.

Tectonic shocks have been unavoidable, however, and five earthquakes, including a 2.1-degree quake on March 4, took place within the last four weeks at North Hamgyong Province, according to the Korea Meteorological Administration.

BY CHUNG YEONG-GYO, ESTHER CHUNG [chung.juhee@joongang.co.kr]