North Korea may be preparing missile, rocket launch, NPR says

NOrTH KOrEA could be preparing to launch a missile or rocket in the near future, according to satellite images of activity at the Sanumdong facility, US radio network NPr reported.

The images, taken on February 22, show trucks and cars parked near the facility. rail cars sit in a nearby yard, where two cranes are erected, the report said. The pictures were taken by DigitalGlobe and shared exclusively with NPr, it said.

The facility, near the capital Pyongyang, is where North Korea has assembled some of its intercontinental ballistic missiles and satellite-launching rockets, NPr said.

“When you put all that together, that’s really what it looks like when the North Koreans are in the process of building a rocket,” Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Project at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, told NPr. Lewis said it was impossible to know if North Korea is preparing a military missile or a space rocket.

The release of the images comes after Donald Trump abruptly ended a summit with Kim Jong Un in Hanoi late last month after the US president said the North Korean leader asked for all US sanctions to be lifted in exchange for the dismantling of the country’s main nuclear complex.

Trump said on Wednesday that he’d be very disappointed in Kim if reports are accurate that North Korea has begun rebuilding a separate missile test site it dismantled last year. Images from Beyond Parallel, part of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, showed that North Korea was rebuilding a long-range rocket site at the Sohae Launch Facility.

The US is aware of the satellite images but hasn’t drawn the same conclusions as experts, a senior official at the US State Department said on March 8. Bloomberg News