San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
U.N. panel warns of nuclear test
UNITED NATIONS — U.N. experts report that North Korea is testing “nuclear triggering devices” and that its preparations for another nuclear test were at a final stage in June, quoting information from unnamed countries.
The panel of experts said in new excerpts from their latest report obtained by the Associated Press that they have been “unable to identify the test locations and dates” for the tests of triggering devices reported by one U.N. member state. But in a new excerpt, the panel said: “As of early June, two member states assessed that the preparation for nuclear tests was at a final stage.”
South Korean and U.S. intelligence officials have said they detected North Korean efforts to prepare its northeastern Punggye-ri testing ground for another nuclear test. It would be the North’s seventh since 2006 and the first since September 2017, when it claimed to have detonated a thermonuclear bomb to fit on its intercontinental ballistic missiles.
The panel of experts’ report to the U.N. Security Council provides some details of the work being carried out at the site by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the country’s official name. The experts said they observed that the DPRK started re-excavation work in March at Punggye-ri.
“Work at the Punggye-ri nuclear test site paves the way
An image of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is seen on a news program broadcast at Seoul Railway Station last month.
for additional nuclear tests for the development of nuclear weapons,” the experts said, adding that this is an objective stated at the Eighth Congress of the country’s ruling Workers’ Party of Korea in January 2021.
Robert Floyd, head of the U.N. nuclear test ban treaty organization, told a U.N. press conference Friday that its monitoring facilities detected the six previous DPRK nuclear tests. “If there is a seventh time, I’m very confident our system will pick it up, we’ll characterize it, and that information then gets shared with the states of the world,” he said.
In another aspect of the DPRK’s nuclear program, analysts said satellite images last September showed that North Korea was expanding a uranium enrichment plant at its main Yongbyon nuclear complex, a
sign that it wanted to boost production of the key bomb material.
Nuclear negotiations between the United States and North Korea have stalled since 2019 over disagreements over the DPRK demand to lift crippling U.S.-led sanctions and Washington’s demand for significant steps by Pyongyang toward nuclear disarmament.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has expanded his ballistic missile program amid the diplomatic pause, and analysts say another nuclear test would escalate his brinkmanship aimed at cementing the North’s status as a nuclear power, and negotiating economic and security concessions from a position of strength.