NORTH Korea is gearing up for a new nuclear test by digging an underground tunnel, Japan has warned.
The country’s Foreign Minister Taro Kono said: “[North Korea] is doing everything possible to prepare for the next nuclear test: it is currently extracting earth from an underground tunnel where the previous test was carried out.”
The minister said previously the secretive state “does not reveal its intentions to the outside world in terms of denuclearisation”.
The claim comes just days after Kim Jong-un promised to bin his beloved nuclear weapons if he could be guaranteed security and US military threats against North Korea were to stop.
At the end of last year the tyrant declared his country a fully fledged nuclear power after launching a new missile he claimed was capable of hitting anywhere on the planet.
Nuclear devices are often tested underground to prevent radioactive material released in the explosion reaching the surface and contaminating the environment — this method also ensures a degree of secrecy.
The release of radiation from an underground nuclear explosion — an effect known as “venting” — would give away clues to the technical composition and size of a country’s device.
A test site is carefully geologically surveyed to ensure suitability — usually in a place well away from population centres.
The nuclear device is placed into a drilled hole or tunnel usually between 200-800m below the surface, and several metres wide. Last year a tunnel at an underground North Korean nuclear site was said to have collapsed.
Up to 200 people were thought to have died at the Punggye-ri nuclear test site in the northeast of the country.
The accident was believed to have been caused by Kim Jong-un’s sixth nuclear test which weakened the mountain, according to the report.
Former British Defence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon previously warned that Britain is at risk from North Korea’s long-range nuclear missile program as some cities are closer than American targets.
Revised estimates suggest the total number of missiles the rogue state has is believed to be between 13 and 21.
And the regime is estimated to have at least four nuclear warheads.
Satellite images of Jong-un’s main missile test site in August revealed North Korea’s weapons were more powerful than initially thought.
Careful analysis of North Korean tests sites, using images from Planet, reveal the regime has been gradually building up the size of its missiles.
But together, the Kim-Moon meeting serves more as a prelude to the Trump-Kim summit. And if those talks fail, Harry Kazianis, an Asia security expert at the Center for the National Interest think tank, thinks the chances of war might increase.
“We are putting all of our eggs in the summit basket,” he told me. “This is the ultimate Hail Mary.”
The North Korea nuclear standoff: how we went from “fire and fury” to talks in under a yearVox, “North Korea has 100 percent changed its tactics.” By Alex Ward@AlexWardVoxalex.ward@vox.com
Last year, it seemed like war between the United States and North Korea was a real possibility.
“The United States has great strength and patience, but if it is forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea,” President Donald Trumpsaid at the United Nations on September 19, 2017. “Rocket Man is on a suicide mission for himself and for his regime,” he continued, using his favored nickname for North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
Flash-forward to March 29, 2018, when Pyongyang and Seoul announced that Kim and South Korean President Moon Jae-in will meet face to face in April for talks. It’ll be only the third in-person meeting between the heads of both countries, and the first since 2007. But that’s not all: The Kim-Moon summit will lay the groundwork for an even more historic meeting between Kim and Trump sometime in either May or June, although it remains unscheduled.
How did we get here? How did North Korea and the US go from talk of potential nuclear warto actual, well, talks? Here’s one explanation: Experts tell me the war threats may have actually scared leaders like Trump.
“I’d like to believe that while President Trump talks tough,” Leon Panetta, the former defense secretary and CIA director, told me, “deep down, he also is concerned about involving this country in another war that is going to cost thousands of lives.”
But others simply give credit to North Korea. “North Korea has 100 percent changed its tactics,” Sue Mi Terry, a North Korea expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank, told me. “I think this is all North Korea actually driving this.”
Whatever the reason, top officials want to take advantage of this moment. “We must not let this historic opportunity for diplomacy go to waste,” Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations committee, told me.
What follows is a guide to how the two countries went from a nuclear standoff to a rare moment of cautious optimism.
Kim pivots from bombs to talks………..
The coming Trump-Kim summit made the South Korea meeting possible
On March 8, South Korean envoys who had just met with Kim Jong Un relayed a message to Trump: The North Korean leader wanted to meet with him. Trump reportedly accepted the offer on the spot.
Moon, the South Korean president, seemed relieved by the news. He campaigned in part on easing tensions with North Korea and continually advocated for a diplomatic solution to the US-North Korea standoff. After Trump agreed to meet with Kim, Moon offered three-way talks between him and the other two leaders.
That, however, is not in the works. Instead, Moon and Kim finally set a date for their face-to-face meeting in April. But Terry, the North Korea expert, told me she doesn’t expect much from the Kim-Moon summit. Instead, she said “South Korea’s chief goal is to set up that [the] Trump-Kim meeting goes well.”
As for Kim, he likely wants a greater sense of how badly Moon wants to strike some sort of deal.
Kim is already preparing for both encounters. This week, he took a secret trip to Beijing to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Oriana Skylar Mastro, a China expert at Georgetown University, told me in an interview that Kim wanted to ensure he had China’s support ahead of talks with the US. Having Beijing’s backing could help Kim not concede too much in talks with Moon and Trump.
Kim needs the help. Trump will want Kim to give up his nuclear weapons, but experts are unanimous that Kim won’t agree to do so. Having China’s support allows the North Korean leader to feel more comfortable defying the American president.
“I think the North Korean leader made some very smart moves and has put himself in a good position,” Panetta, the former Obama Cabinet official, told me. “He has given himself greater leverage ahead of these meetings.”
Put together, the Kim-Moon meeting serves more as a prelude to the Trump-Kim summit. And if those talks fail, Harry Kazianis, an Asia security expert at the Center for the National Interest think tank, thinks the chances of war might increase.
Renewed activity at North Korean nuclear site sparks fears, UNNERVING satellite images of a North Korean nuclear site suggest that Kim Jong-un may be expanding his nuclear program. Eric Talmadge, news.com.auAPMARCH 29, 2018
INCREASED activity at a North Korean nuclear site has once again caught the attention of analysts and renewed concerns about the complexities of denuclearisation talks.
The satallite imagery, taken last month, were released as United States President Donald Trump prepares for a summit with Kim Jong-un in the coming weeks.
Yesterday, Xinhua News revealed that during a secret visit to China, Mr Kim had told Chinese President Xi Jinping that he was ready for talks with the US about nuclear weapons, promising to give up his nuclear arsenal.
But observers believe these images suggest the North has begun preliminary testing of an experimental light water reactor and possibly brought another reactor online at its Yongbyon Nuclear Research Centre.
Both could be used to produce the fissile materials needed for nuclear bombs.
The findings come at a particularly sensitive time.
The Strategic Wisdom of Accommodating North Korea’s Nuclear Status
What if Washington came to terms with a nuclear North Korea but remained on the peninsula? The Diplomat , By Graham W. Jenkins, March 28, 2018
As the North Korean “crisis” continues to unfold, any negotiations, including the possible (albeit unlikely) Trump-Kim summit, represent a significant strategic opportunity for coming decades — even if today’s official policy goals are never achieved.
Pyongyang and Washington must come to terms with two realities: North Korea will not surrender its nuclear arsenal; the United States will not withdraw its support for South Korea. But once the U.S. policymaking apparatus accepts this, the aperture of the possible widens. By tacitly acquiescing to North Korea’s nuclear status — and in the process, securing concessions on advance warning and notifications, among other subjects — the United States could partially supplant China as a patron (in a limited sense), simultaneously shoring up peninsular stability and presenting China with a new security challenge on its own border, requiring the diversion of forces and materiel……..
There are significant drawbacks to outright recognition of North Korea as a nuclear state. Even though by withdrawing from the NPT, North Korea did not violate international law per se, openly admitting that any country can a) exercise Article X and withdraw from the NPT and then b) develop and test a nuclear arsenal, without suffering consequences for it, sets a troubling precedent, to put it mildly. But it is still possible to pursue a policy of splitting the needle: quietly accepting (not officially, but through nonofficial or track II diplomatic efforts) North Korea’s nuclear status while refusing to officially condone it. Such a tacit form of acceptance would also allow the United States to potentially extract concessions from Pyongyang and allow it to maintain its nuclear arsenal, all of which would serve to reduce its reliance on China as a client state, and instead allow it to chart a more independent path, but one in which the United States, China, and South Korea would still be able to deter any major crises.
……… It’s important, too, to condition any U.S. acknowledgement on North Korea making concessions. There is a broad range of requests that would represent positive policy outcomes, depending on the executive branch’s preferences. Advance notice of missile and nuclear testing (or even adherence to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty), establishing a “hotline” linking Pyongyang, Seoul, Washington, and Tokyo for crisis management, visible human rights changes like work camp prisoner releases or allowing humanitarian workers into the country, withdrawing artillery from the Kaesong Heights – some combination of these or others should be sufficient to justify changing U.S. policy toward North Korea’s nuclear weapons.
It’s rare that a nation is presented with a win-win-win scenario, but if bold enough to accept this manageable additional risk, the United States can emerge from this missile crisis in a stronger strategic position than before, with an adversary forced to reinforce an additional front and with our own hand strengthened. While the Trump-Kim summit – and indeed, any diplomatic efforts whatsoever – might now be a flight of fancy, with the ascension of John Bolton to national security advisor, negotiations remain the single best means of resolving the current Korean crisis. The United States stands to gain much: not least of all, avoiding a needless war.
Trump’s nuclear summit with Kim ‘will have preconditions’ SMH, 12 Mar 18 Washington: US President Donald Trump’s condition for meeting North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is that there be no nuclear or missile testing, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said on Sunday.”There shouldn’t be confusion,” Mnuchin told NBC’s Meet the Press when asked about White House press secretary Sarah Sanders’ statement on Friday that there would be no meeting without concrete and verifiable actions by North Korea.
The President has made it clear that the conditions are that there’s no nuclear testing and there’s no missiles and those will be a condition through the meeting.”
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un provides guidance on a nuclear weapons program in this undated photo released by North Korea’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) in Pyongyang September 3, 2017. KCNA via REUTERS
North Korea’s Nuclear Ambitions And Abilities, NPR’s Renee Montagne talks with Siegfried Hecker, a former director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, about North Korea’s nuclear program. National Public Radio. 11 Mar 18
………. HECKER: Well, first of all, I think it’s not very likely to happen, [the meeting between Trump and Kim] . What’s significant in the current situation is they’ve actually said that they would be willing to give up nuclear weapons, you know, if their security is assured, and they’re not threatened. However, to think that’s going to happen in the short term is just not realistic because to build a nuclear weapons program, it’s an enormous number of facilities. It’s a large number of people. It took, well, more or less 50 years but particularly the last 25 years to get to where they are today. They’re not going to turn that over overnight.
…….. MONTAGNE: Well, short of full denuclearization, what other steps could North Korea take to prove, you know, its sincerity in this?
HECKER: So there are very important steps. And one can lay those out. In other words, I look at the things that are highest risk. And those are the things you want them to stop first. So two that were highest on my list – they have, for the time being, said they would do a moratorium. And that’s no more missile tests and no more nuclear tests – because to increase the sophistication of your bombs, you have to do more nuclear tests. The next one would be not to make any more bomb-grade material, which means stop the operation of the reactors. All three of those are verifiable. The problem is on the bomb-grade material, you can also go the uranium route. Those are the centrifuge halls. We know where one of them is. We don’t know where the other one or two are. And that will be extremely difficult to verify. And that’s going to take a long time and a real detailed process with them to get there.
MONTAGNE: From what you know of North Korea from your time on the ground, are they motivated to use these weapons? Is this something to really be afraid of?
HECKER: What I worry about when it comes to the weapons is – one is capability. Second is motivation. And capability – for many years, I was able to say, look. You know, they have the bomb, but they don’t have much. They don’t have a nuclear arsenal. Then comes the motivation part. And would they be motivated to go ahead and attack the United States, Japan or South Korea basically out of the blue? I say absolutely not. They want those weapons to make sure to protect them. Perhaps they want the weapons so that they actually have sort of sufficient maneuvering room, you know, on the Korean Peninsula. What I’ve worried about is not so much that they’re motivated to attack us but rather that we’re going to stumble into a nuclear war.
Donald Trump’s historic bet on Kim Jong Un summit shatters decades of orthodoxy Straits Times 9 Mar 18 WASHINGTON (BLOOMBERG) –US President Donald Trump took the biggest gamble of his presidency on Thursday (March 8), breaking decades of US diplomatic orthodoxy by accepting an invitation to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
The bet is that Mr Trump’s campaign to apply maximum economic pressure on Mr Kim’s regime has forced him to consider what was previously unthinkable: surrendering the illicit nuclear weapons programme begun by his father.
If the president is right, the US would avert what appeared at times last year (2017) to be a steady march towards a second Korean War………
Regardless of how it turns out, the stunning decision by Mr Trump hands Mr Kim a prize long sought by the regime’s ruling dynasty: the legitimacy conferred by a historic meeting with the sitting president.
So much could go wrong.
…….Senator Brian Schatz, a Hawaii Democrat, applauded Mr Trump’s diplomatic effort.
“Expectations should be low and history demonstrates that scepticism and careful diplomatic work are necessary, but it is better to be talking about peace than recklessly ramping up for a war,” he said on Twitter.
DENUCLEARISATION ‘UNLIKELY’
Mr Adam Mount, a senior fellow at the Federation of American Scientists, said that while the talks would extend the period of relative warmth that began during the Olympics, denuclearisation remained “extremely unlikely”.
Nuclear weapons are fundamental to the Kim family’s grip on power at home.
“Kim Jong Un has rational incentives to keep his nuclear arsenal,” Mr Mount said in a phone interview.
He also cautioned that the meeting was “a massive coup” for a regime that “wants to be seen as a regular nuclear power”.
It could lend Mr Kim insights into how the US and South Korea coordinate, and the regime could test Mr Trump by asking for exorbitant terms in exchange for denuclearisation.
Trump accepts invitation to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un Boston Globe, By Anna FifieldTHE WASHINGTON POST
TOKYO – President Donald Trump has agreed to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un for talks, an extraordinary development following months of heightened nuclear tension during which the two leaders exchanged frequent military threats and insults.
Kim has also committed to stopping nuclear and missile testing, even during joint military drills in South Korea next month, Chung Eui-yong, the South Korean national security adviser, told reporters at the White House on Thursday night after briefing the president on his four-hour dinner meeting with Kim in Pyongyang on Monday.
After a year in which North Korea fired intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching all of the United States and tested what is widely thought to have been a hydrogen bomb, such a moratorium would be welcomed by the United States and the world.
Trump and Kim have spent the past year making belligerent statements about each other, with Trump mocking Kim as ‘‘Little Rocket Man’’ and pledging to ‘‘totally destroy’’ North Korea and Kim calling the American president a ‘‘dotard’’ and a ‘‘lunatic’’ and threatening to send nuclear bombs to Washington, D.C.
But Kim has ‘‘expressed his eagerness to meet President Trump as soon as possible,’’ Chung told reporters.
‘President Trump said he would meet Kim
Jong Un by May,’’ Chung said, but he did not provide any information on where the meeting would be. In Seoul, the presidential Blue House clarified that the meeting would occur by the end of May.
Wang Yi says the moment has arrived to test whether all sides are sincere in wanting to resolve tensions over Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons programme
China called for direct dialogue between North Korea and the United States to defuse tensions on the Korean peninsula and warned there was still the potential for chaos amid the stand-off over Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons programme.
The warning by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Thursday came despite the announcement that North and South Korea’s leaders are to meet at a summit, raising hopes that the nuclear crisis might be defused. …….
The South China Morning Post reported that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un may propose sending his sister, Kim Yo-jong, to the US as part of efforts to launch direct talks between Washington and Pyongyang.
This may be one of a number of possible messages South Korean envoy Chung Eui-yong will deliver to US National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster in Washington this week, a South Korean diplomatic source told the Post, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Chung is travelling to Washington with South Korea’s national intelligence service chief Suh Hoon, who, according to multiple South Korean diplomatic sources, will meet his US counterpart Mike Pompeo.
……. The fact that North Korea did not conduct nuclear and missile tests during the Winter Olympics, while South Korea and the United States have suspended their military drills, proved that China’s approach to handle the nuclear crisis was effective, Wang said.
Kim Jong-un’s sister could be sent to US to launch talks on ending nuclear crisis, South Korean envoy Chung Eui-yong is to deliver an ‘unconventional’ and ‘very unusual’ message to US National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster this week, the Post has learned SCMP, Robert Delaney, US correspondent, 08 March, 2018 North Korean leader Kim Jong-un may propose sending his sister, Kim Yo-jong, to the US as part of efforts to launch direct talks between Washington and Pyongyang, according to a South Korean diplomatic source.
That may be one of a number of possible messages South Korean envoy Chung Eui-yong will deliver to US National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster in Washington this week, the source told the South China Morning Post, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
……… Kim Yo-jong, the North Korean leader’s younger sister, spearheaded a charm offensive from Pyongyang when she attended the start of the Winter Olympic Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea last month, and invited South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in to visit Pyongyang.
Kim Yo-jong was the first member of the North’s ruling dynasty to visit South Korea.
The younger Kim’s presence in Pyeongchang laid the groundwork for visits by two South Korean government delegations to Pyongyang after the Games ended.
What has followed represents a reversal from the militaristic threats Kim Jong-un and US President Donald Trump lobbed at each other – Kim via North Korea’s state media and Trump via Twitter – throughout the second half of last year………
The message Chung and Suh are bringing from Pyongyang is likely to include a freeze or moratorium on the country’s nuclear weapons development programme in exchange for a downgraded or scaled-back version of joint US-South Korea military exercises, Korea Society senior director Stephen Noerper said in an interview.
“It’s a different tack for North Korea to go through South Korea,” Noerper said. “There could be an attempt to try to drive a wedge between the US and South Korea by saying ‘look, here’s all we’re offering and the Americans just aren’t listening’.
JUST when the world thought they had him pegged, Kim Jong Un has stunned with an apparent about face on nuclear weapons. News.com.au Victoria Craw@Victoria_Craw 7 Mar 18NORTH Korea has vowed not to use nuclear weapons against South Korea and could impose a ban on further nuclear and missile tests during talks with the US, South Korean media reports.
The stunning about face followed the first meeting between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and South Korean officials since 2011.
It led to claims Kim Jong Un would not use conventional weapons against South Korea and had no reason to possesses nuclear weapons if it has a security guarantee.
The leaders also agreed to establish a “hotline” between the countries to reduce military tensions and will meet for another summit in late April at the border village of Panmunjom.
President Trump weighed in on the news on Twitter, saying “the US is ready to go hard in either direction”.
“The North side clearly affirmed its commitment to the denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula and said it would have no reason to possess nuclear weapons should the safety of its regime be guaranteed and military threats against North Korea removed,” he said.
North Korea says it’s deploying nuclear missiles https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20180223_18/ North Korea’s ruling party newspaper says the country’s military is pushing forward with its deployment of nuclear warheads and ballistic missiles.
The Rodong Sinmun made the comment in an editorial on Friday.
The article says the country possesses intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and hydrogen bombs. It insists that it has made all preparations for a possible nuclear attack on the United States.
The editorial also says that wishing for the denuclearization of North Korea is more foolish than waiting for the ocean to dry up.
North Korea has been fostering a reconciliatory mood with South Korea during the ongoing PyeongChang Winter Olympics.
But the North staged a military parade on February 8th, the eve of the Games’ opening ceremony, displaying the new ICBM-class missile known as the Hwasong-15.
US imposes largest package of sanctions against North Korea, SMH, 24 Feb 18 US President Donald Trump says the United States will impose the “largest-ever” package of sanctions on North Korea, intensifying pressure on the reclusive country to give up its nuclear and missile programmes.
In addressing the Trump administration’s biggest national security challenge, the US Treasury sanctioned one person, 27 companies and 28 ships, according to a statement posted on the US Treasury Department’s website.
The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control announced the measures, which are designed to disrupt North Korean shipping and trading companies and vessels and to further isolate Pyongyang.
The ships are located, registered or flagged in North Korea, China, Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Marshall Islands, Tanzania, Panama and Comoros.
A North Korean cyberspy group known as “Reaper” is rapidly expanding its operations and scope of capability posing a global threat to overseas networks, according to a new report from the California cybersecurity firm FireEye Inc.
The group is also identified by FireEye as APT37 and has been active since at least 2012, focusing primarily on the public and private sectors in South Korea. In 2017, the group began attacks on Japan, Vietnam, and the Middle East, according to the report.
FireEye said it had “high confidence” the activities carried out by APT37 are on behalf of the North Korean government and include use of wiper malware and zero-day vulnerabilities, where hackers exploit vulnerabilities in computer software on the same day those vulnerabilities become known, preventing developers from the opportunity to fix problems before they occur.
“Our concern is that this could be used for a disruptive attack rather than a classic espionage mission, which we already know that the North Koreans are regularly carrying out,” FireEye Director of Intelligence Analysis John Hultquist said to the Washington Post.
APT37 joins North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s growing list of hacking units that have been accused of being behind massive cyberattacks in the past, including the group “Lazarus’” hack on Sony Pictures in 2014.
. U.S. officials also blamed the Kim regime for the WannaCry virus last year.
“Ignored, these threats enjoy the benefit of surprise, allowing them to extract significant losses on their victims, many of whom have never previously heard of the actor,” FireEye said in an emailed statement to Bloomberg.
North Korea seeks easing tensions, but vows to advance nuclear power Nikkei Asian Review, 16 Feb 18, BEIJING (Kyodo) — North Korea called on South Korea on Friday to abandon its joint military drills with the United States to improve inter-Korean ties further, while reiterating its eagerness to advance its nuclear capacity to make the country a military power.
Uriminzokkiri, North Korea’s propaganda website, said U.S.-South Korea joint exercises, which have been postponed while the Winter Olympics and Paralympics are under way in the South, “should be ended forever.”
“To mend relations between the north and the south and to make a breakthrough toward the unification, military tensions should be reduced as a matter of first priority,” it said in its editorial published on the 76th anniversary of former leader Kim Jong Il’s birth.
Pyongyang has been steadfastly opposed to the annual joint military drills, describing them as preparations for invasion.
The official newspaper of North Korea’s ruling Workers’ Party, meanwhile, said in an editorial Friday that Pyongyang has become a nuclear power thanks to earnest efforts by Kim Jong Il, father of the current leader Kim Jong Un.
“We have to boost our prestige as the world’s strongest nuclear nation,” the Rodong Sinmun, North Korea’s most influential newspaper, said, indicating Pyongyang is still intending to develop nuclear weapons despite a thaw with the South.
Relations between the two Koreas are apparently improving after North Korea decided to join the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, which began late last week. Through high-level delegates including his sister, Kim Jong Un has invited South Korean President Moon Jae In to visit Pyongyang for a summit.
Washington and Seoul have agreed to suspend their joint military drills until the March 18 end of the Paralympics, to which North Korea has pledged to send its athletes.
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