USA TODAY International Edition
N. Korea running secret ballistic missile bases
Research shows 13 of 20 undeclared locations
WASHINGTON – North Korea has at least 13 secret operating bases where the regime is continuing work on its ballistic missile program, a sign Kim Jong Un is not winding down his country’s nuclear program despite public promises touted by the Trump administration.
New research, conducted by the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Security, has identified 13 of an estimated 20 North Korean missile operating bases that Kim’s regime has not declared.
North Korea’s highly publicized move to decommission a satellite launch facility gained a flurry of positive media attention. But that move “obscures the military threat to U.S. forces and South Korea from this and other undeclared ballistic missile bases,” the CSIS report concludes.
A State Department spokesperson did not address the new findings, but said: “President Trump has made clear that should Chairman Kim follow through on his commitments –including complete denuclearization and the elimination of ballistic missile programs – a much brighter future lies ahead for North Korea and its people.”
CSIS experts used satellite images to locate the undeclared military bases, which they said could be used “for all classes” of ballistic missiles, including intercontinental missiles capable of reaching the United States.
The findings, first reported by the New York Times, stand in stark contrast to President Donald Trump’s declaration that North Korea no longer represents a nuclear threat and that he has made progress is persuading Kim to declare and relinquish his nuclear arsenal.
The new report emphasizes that the hidden bases are not launch facilities. However, they are “permanent facilities that contain a unit’s headquarters, barracks, housing, support, maintenance, and storage facilities,” the report says.
Trump claimed in June that “there is no longer a nuclear threat” from North Korea just after he returned to the U.S. from a historic summit meeting with Kim in Signapore.
his idea that they’re giving up their nuclear program is quite a fantasy,” said Ivan Eland, a national security expert with the Independent Institute, a Libertarian-leaning think tank.
He and others said revelation that North Korea has continued unabated with its ballistic missile program is no surprise.
“Kim literally ordered ballistic missiles to be mass produced on New Year’s day 2018,” Vipin Narang, a professor MIT and expert in nuclear proliferation, said in a tweet on Monday. “He never offered to stop producing them, let alone give them up. Ever. He is doing exactly what he said he was going to do.
At the Singapore summit, Trump and Kim signed a vaguely worded agreement in which North Korea promised to work toward a “complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.” But the North Koreans have not few visible, concrete steps toward fulfilling that pledge.