Seoul: New activity at N. Korea’s missile centre
SEOUL: South Korea’s military says it’s carefully monitoring North Korean nuclear and missile facilities after the country’s spy agency told lawmakers that new activity was detected at a research centre where the North presumably builds its long-range missiles targeting the US mainland.
Seoul’s Defence Ministry spokesman Choi Hyun-soo said yesterday the US and South Korean militaries are maintaining close intelligence coordination over developments at the North’s missile research centre in Pyongyang and also a separate long-range rocket site. She did not elaborate what the developments were.
But a lawmaker who attended a closeddoor intelligence briefing said that National Intelligence Service director Suh Hoon said his agency was spotting increased vehicle movement at the Pyongyang facility.
Suh also told lawmakers that the North was restoring facilities at a rocket launch site in Tongchang-ri that it partially dismantled last year as part of disarmament steps, an assessment supported by private US reports based on satellite imagery. While the NIS believes the North has not produced plutonium for nuclear weapons in months, signs of use have been seen at the uranium-enrichment facility at the North’s main nuclear complex in Yongbyon, the lawmaker said. The International Atomic Energy Agency provided a similar estimation in a recent report.
The revelations follow the talks last week between North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and President Donald Trump that collapsed over what the Americans said were North Korea’s excessive demands for sanctions relief in exchange for a limited offer to partially shutter the Yongbyon site.
It wasn’t immediately clear how the findings might affect the diplomacy.
The United States and North Korea accused each other of causing the breakdown of the summit in Vietnam, but both sides left the door open for future negotiations.