North Korean missile sites suggest great deception

North Korea is moving ahead with its missile programme at 16 hidden bases that have been identified in new commercial satellite images — a network known to United States intelligence agencies, but left undiscussed as President Donald Trump claims to have neutralised the North’s nuclear threat.

The satellite images suggest that the North has been engaged in a great deception: it has offered to dismantle a major launching site — a step it began, then halted — while continuing to improve others that would bolster launches of conventional and nuclear warheads.

The existence of the ballistic missile b a ses c ontradicts Trump’s assertion that his landmark diplomacy is leading to the elimination of a nuclear and missile programme that the North had warned could devastate the United States.

But US intelligence officials say that the North’s production of nuclear material, of new nuclear weapons and of missiles that can be placed on mobile launchers and hidden in mountains at the secret bases, has continued.

And the sanctions are collapsing, in part because North Korea has leveraged its new relationship with Washington, and its stated commitment to denuclearisation, to resume trade with Russia and China.

Moreover, a US programme to track those mobile missiles with a new generation of small, inexpensive satellites, disclosed by The New York Times more than a year ago, has stalled.

The secret ballistic missile bases were identified in a study by the Beyond Parallel programme at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, a major think tank here.

The programme, which focuses on the prospects of North-South integration, is led by Victor Cha, a North Korea expert whom the Trump administration considered appointing as the ambassador to South Korea last year.

His name was pulled back when he objected to the White House strategy for dealing with Kim Jong-un.