[There have been reports that the test site, buried under Mount Mantap, was suffering from “tired mountain syndrome” and was unusable after September’s huge test, which caused an earthquake so big that satellites caught images of the mountain above the site actually moving.]
By
Anna Fifield
TOKYO
— The South Korean
government is trying to keep up the momentum in diplomatic efforts to resolve
the North Korean nuclear question, announcing Sunday that the North would
dismantle its main nuclear test site next month and that its leader, Kim Jong
Un, was prepared to meet with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
The South’s presidential Blue House also
revealed a symbolic step of goodwill from Kim: North Korea would move its clock
forward half an hour to return to the same time zone as Seoul and Tokyo.
This came two days after a historic summit
between South Korea’s Moon Jae-in and Kim, which resulted in a joint statement
containing a vague agreement to work toward the “complete denuclearization of
the Korean Peninsula.”
Kim pledged to dismantle the nuclear test
site at Punggye-ri, in the north of his country, in May, a Blue House spokesman
said Sunday.
“Some say that we are terminating facilities
that are not functioning, but you will see that we have two more tunnels that
are bigger than the existing ones and that they are in good condition,” Moon’s
chief press secretary, Yoon Young-chan, quoted Kim as saying.
There have been reports that the test site,
buried under Mount Mantap, was suffering from “tired mountain syndrome” and was
unusable after September’s huge test, which caused an earthquake so big that
satellites caught images of the mountain above the site actually moving.
But numerous nuclear experts have cast doubt
on that theory, and Kim apparently did, too.
Kim said he would invite security experts and
journalists to the North to observe the closure of the site, Yoon said.
That will probably prompt skepticism in
Washington, given that in 2008 North Korea invited international journalists to
film the destruction of the cooling tower at the Yongbyon nuclear reactor, from
which it had been harvesting plutonium to make its first bombs.
All the while, it turned out that North Korea
was building a separate uranium enrichment facility so it could continue to
produce fissile material even without Yongbyon.
[In a feel-good Korea summit, Kim lays the
groundwork for meeting with Trump ]
Kim also reportedly said he had no intention
of using his nuclear weapons against neighboring countries.
“Although I am inherently resistant toward
America, people will see that I am not the kind of person who fires nukes at
South Korea, the Pacific or America,” Kim said during the summit, Yoon told
reporters Sunday.
“Why would we keep nuclear weapons and live
in a difficult condition if we often meet with Americans to build trust and
they promise us to end the war and not to invade us?” Yoon quoted Kim as
saying.
That will certainly be viewed as
disingenuous, to say the least, given that Kim’s representatives and North
Korean state media outlets repeatedly threatened last year to fire
nuclear-tipped missiles at the United States and to detonate a hydrogen bomb
over the Pacific.
But this is a new year, and Kim, in a strong
position having obtained demonstrably functional nuclear weapons and missiles,
appears ready to deal.
Kim also said he would turn the clocks
forward in North Korea to put them back in sync with South Korea and Japan,
Yoon said.
In 2015, on Aug. 15 — the day the Koreas mark
their independence from Japan’s colonial rule — the Kim regime put the clocks
back half an hour to create the “Pyongyang time” zone. It framed the decision
as a rebuke to Japan.
[Trump hails ‘historic’ Korea meeting but
leaves questions about next step ]
South Korea’s progressive president wants to
use his summit with Kim as a springboard to improve Pyongyang’s relations with
Tokyo and, particularly, with Washington.
Moon and President Trump spoke on the phone
for 75 minutes on Saturday night Seoul time and agreed that South Korea and the
United States should continue to closely coordinate “so that the planned
U.S.-North Korea summit generates an agreement on concrete measures to realize
complete denuclearization,” the Blue House spokesman said.
Trump tweeted afterward that he “had a long
and very good talk with President Moon of South Korea.”
“Things are going very well, time and
location of meeting with North Korea is being set,” Trump said. “Also spoke to
Prime Minister Abe of Japan to inform him of the ongoing negotiations.”
Moon also spoke with Abe over the weekend and
“offered to lay a bridge between North Korea and Japan,” another Blue House
spokesman said.
Moon and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang are
expected to meet in Tokyo for a trilateral meeting with Abe — a significant
breakthrough in the frosty relations in the region — on May 9.
Moon will then travel to Washington for a
meeting with Trump about the latter’s summit with Kim, expected to take place
at the end of May or beginning of June.
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