North Korea gets more warnings over possible nuke test

North Korea

Published: 07 Jun. 2022, 18:45

North Korea gets more warnings over possible nuke test

Fighter jets from the South Korean and U.S. militaries fly in formation during a joint air exercise over the Yellow Sea in a show of force on Tuesday. [JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF]

U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman warned North Korea of a "swift and forceful response" if it conducts a nuclear weapons test, as the United Nations nuclear watchdog warned of such a test.

Sherman, who is in Seoul to meet with her South Korean and Japanese counterparts on Wednesday, issued the warning after a meeting with Seoul’s Vice Foreign Minister Cho Hyun-dong.

“Any nuclear test would be in complete violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions. There would be a swift and forceful response to such a test,” Sherman said, adding that Washington would “continue to urge Pyongyang to cease its destabilizing and provocative activities and choose the path of diplomacy.”

Sherman and Cho are scheduled to meet with Japanese Vice Foreign Minister Mori Takeo on Wednesday to discuss North Korea’s nuclear program.

A North Korean soldier stands guard outside the No. 2 tunnel at the Punggye-ri underground nuclear testing site in North Pyongan Province in May 2018. [JOINT PRESS CORPS]

Sherman's comments came as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said that North Korea appears to be preparing for a seventh nuclear test at its Punggye-ri nuclear test site.

IAEA Director-General Rafael Grossi presented the assessment in a statement to the agency’s Board of Governors on Monday in Vienna.

Grossi told the board that one of the tunnel entrances at Punggye-ri, located in North Korea’s remote mountainous North Hamgyong Province, has been reopened ahead of a potential nuclear test.

The IAEA chief said the watchdog is continuing to detect signs that the five-megawatt reactor at the North’s main nuclear research facility at Yongbyon, North Pyongan Province is operational.

The facility at Yongbyon is believed to have produced fissile material for North Korea's previous six nuclear weapon tests from 2006 to 2017. All of the tests took place underground at Punggye-ri.

The nuclear watchdog chief’s report follows satellite imagery analysis and assessments by South Korean and U.S. intelligence officials in recent months that have concluded the North is nearing the end of preparations to conduct a nuclear test.

These steps included excavating tunnels and constructing buildings, most of which were demolished in May 2018 when Pyongyang declared a self-imposed moratorium on major weapons tests.

In a sign of how seriously South Korea and Washington are taking a potential seventh nuclear test, the allies’ militaries flew 20 fighter jets over the Yellow Sea to the west of the peninsula on Tuesday.

Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said the show of force involved 16 South Korean planes — including F-35A stealth fighters — and four U.S. F-16 fighter jets and demonstrated the allies’ ability to respond swiftly to North Korean provocations.

The joint air exercise came after the allies fired eight surface-to-surface MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile System (Atacms) missiles on Monday morning in a tit-for-tat response to North Korea launching eight short-range ballistic missiles (SRBM) into waters east of the Korean Peninsula on Sunday.

South Korea and the United States also recently wrapped up joint naval drills involving the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan off the Japanese island of Okinawa over the weekend. The exercises were the allies’ first since 2017 to involve a U.S. aircraft carrier.

The drills came two weeks U.S. President Joe Biden and South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol agreed at a summit in Seoul to upgrade the scale of their joint defense exercises and increase the deployment of U.S. strategic assets to the region to protect South Korea.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Ned Price underlined Washington’s efforts to deepen multilateral cooperation with partners and allies such as Seoul and Tokyo on the issue of Pyongyang’s growing arsenal of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in the face of a potential nuclear test.

“We remain concerned that the DPRK could seek a seventh nuclear test in the coming days,” Price said, using the acronym for the North’s official name, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

“It's a concern we have warned about for some time, I can assure you that it is a contingency we have planned for, and it has been a concerted topic of discussion with allies and partners,” added Price.

Price emphasized Washington’s “ironclad commitment” to Seoul and Tokyo, saying that Washington shares “the complete denuclearization of the DPRK” as a common goal with its allies in Northeast Asia.

Price further specified that he did not believe unilateral actions would be effective.

“Unilateral actions are never going to be the most attractive or even the most effective response, and that is especially the case because we are gratified that we have close allies in the form of Japan and the ROK bilaterally, trilaterally,” the State Department spokesman said. ROK refers to the Republic of Korea, which is the official name of South Korea.

“There are a number of allies and partners of ours, not only in the Indo-Pacific but around the world, who understand and appreciate the threat that’s posed by the DPRK’s WMD programs,” Price added.

“There are other means by which we can promote that accountability,” Price said in reference to inaction from the Security Council. “Our partners and allies have authorities that we can coordinate just as we work on defense and deterrence together with our partners in the region.”

Despite previous Security Council resolutions that forbid North Korea from conducting tests of ballistic missile technology and promise consequences for violations, the council has failed to adopt any new sanctions in response to the regime’s 18 missile tests this year.

Russia and China most recently vetoed a U.S.-sponsored resolution that would have imposed additional sanctions on North Korea over its previous ballistic tests on May 25.

BY MICHAEL LEE [lee.junhyuk@joongang.co.kr]