North Korea completely dismantles nuke test site

SEOUL, South Korea (AFP) — North Korea said it had fully demolished its only known nuclear test site on Thursday with a series of planned detonations that put the facility beyond further use.

“The Nuclear Weapons In-

stitute of the DPRK held a ceremony for completely dismantling the northern nuclear test ground on May 24... to ensure transparency of the discontinuence of nuclear test,” the institute said in an English language statement carried on the state-run KCNA news agency.

Reporters at the scene described a series of explosions throughout the day, three of them in entry tunnels to the underground facility, followed by blasts that demolished a nearby barracks and other structures.

“There was a huge explosion, you could feel it. Dust came at you, the heat came at you. It was extremely loud,” Tom Cheshire, a journalist for Sky News who was among those invited to attend the ceremony, wrote on the British broadcaster’s website.

The Punggye-ri test facility is buried inside a mountain in North Hamgyong province, near the border with China and is North Korea’s only known nuclear test site.

It has been the staging ground for all six of the North’s nuclear tests, including its latest and by far most powerful one in September last year, which Pyongyang said was an H-bomb.

Concession or stunt? Experts are divided over whether the demolition will render the site useless. Skeptics say the facility has already outlived its usefulness with six successful nuclear tests in the bag and can be quickly rebuilt if needed.

North Korea did not invite any independent observers from overseas.

But others say the fact that North Korea agreed to destroy the site without preconditions and without asking for something in return from Washington suggests the regime is serious about change.

Skeptics have said the move to destroy the site is an empty concession by Kim as the site is already suffering from “tired mountain syndrome” and may be obsolete. Others say North Korea has learned all it needs from the nuclear tests conducted there.

“They already collected the necessary data through six nuclear tests and unless they discard that data, there are suspicions over how significant the dismantling of a nuclear test site that has already run its course is,” said Go Myong-Hyun, an analyst at the Asan Institute of Policy Studies.

But Jeffrey Lewis of the Middlebury Institute of Strategic Studies says there is “no basis” to conclude Punggye-ri is no longer usable and the closure is “not a case of passing off damaged goods.”

Koh Yu-hwan, a North Korea expert at Dongguk University, said the demolition “cannot be dismissed as a media stunt.”