[North Korea began dismantling the Sohae Satellite Launching Station in Tongchang-ri near its northwestern border with China last summer, after Mr. Kim held his first meeting with Mr. Trump in June in Singapore. It partially took down an engine test site, a rocket launchpad and a rail-mounted building used by engineers to assemble launch vehicles and move them to the launchpad.]
By
Choe Sang-Hun
 |
|
An
image of the Sohae Satellite Launching Station in Tongchang-ri, North Korea,
provided
by a research institute that says reconstruction work there has begun.
Credi
Csis/Beyond Parallel, via DigitalGlobe 2019, via Reuters
|
SEOUL,
South Korea — North Korea
has started rebuilding the facilities it uses to launch satellites into orbit
and test engines and other technologies for its intercontinental ballistic
missile program, according to American military analysts and South Korean
intelligence officials.
The revelation comes days after the breakdown
of the second summit meeting between the North’s leader, Kim Jong-un, and
President Trump last week in Hanoi, Vietnam. It could be a first sign that
North Korea is preparing to end its moratorium on missile tests, which Mr.
Trump has claimed as a major diplomatic achievement.
North Korea began dismantling the Sohae
Satellite Launching Station in Tongchang-ri near its northwestern border with
China last summer, after Mr. Kim held his first meeting with Mr. Trump in June
in Singapore. It partially took down an engine test site, a rocket launchpad
and a rail-mounted building used by engineers to assemble launch vehicles and
move them to the launchpad.
The North did not completely dismantle the
facilities, and when Mr. Kim met with President Moon Jae-in of South Korea in
September, he offered to destroy them in the presence of American experts.
But that offer is now in doubt, after Mr.
Kim’s meeting with Mr. Trump in Hanoi ended without an agreement on how to end
the North’s nuclear weapons and missile programs.
In Hanoi, Mr. Kim asked for the removal of
punishing United Nations sanctions in return for the dismantling of its
Yongbyon nuclear complex north of Pyongyang, the North’s capital, as well as
the Tongchang-ri facilities. Mr. Trump rejected the demand, calling the lifting
of sanctions too high a price to pay for partial moves toward denuclearization.
Although the Yongbyon complex has been used
to produce nuclear bomb fuel, North Korea is believed to have other fuel-making
facilities elsewhere, as well as fissile materials, nuclear warheads and
missiles that it keeps in secret locations.
Analysts have wondered what Mr. Kim’s next
move might be after the breakdown of the Hanoi talks. In a New Year’s Day
speech, he warned that North Korea would find a “new way” if the United States
persisted with sanctions.
The news of rebuilding at Tongchang-ri first
emerged hours after Mr. Kim returned home on Tuesday from Hanoi.
Speaking to lawmakers behind closed doors at
South Korea’s National Assembly on Tuesday, officials from its National
Intelligence Service indicated that North Korea had been rebuilding the
Tongchang-ri facilities even before the Hanoi summit meeting, South Korean news
media reported on Wednesday.
North Korea may have wanted to rebuild them
in order to make their dismantling more dramatic if the Hanoi summit produced a
deal with the Americans, the intelligence officials were quoted as saying. Or
it may have wanted the option to resume rocket tests if the Hanoi talks broke
down, they said.
The intelligence service declined to confirm
the South Korean reports on Wednesday.
North Korea has not conducted any nuclear or
missile tests since November 2017. Mr. Trump has cited that as a key
achievement of his policy of imposing tough sanctions, which he said forced
North Korea to return to the negotiating table.
Speaking at a news conference in Hanoi last
week, Mr. Trump said Mr. Kim had promised not to resume nuclear or missile
tests. Later, the United States canceled two large-scale joint military
exercises with South Korea to help support Mr. Trump’s diplomacy with Mr. Kim.
The Tongchang-ri facilities have been vital
to North Korea’s space and missile programs. The country has used the
facilities there to launch satellite-carrying rockets. The United States has
called the satellite program a front for developing intercontinental ballistic
missiles.
Mr. Kim visited the rocket engine test site
in 2017 when engineers there successfully tested a new high-thrust engine,
which was believed to have powered intercontinental ballistic missiles that the
North launched months later.
Reports published Tuesday on the rebuilding
at Tongchang-ri were based on satellite images obtained Saturday, but analysts
said the work could have begun as early as mid-February.
“Based on commercial satellite imagery,
efforts to rebuild these structures started sometime between February 16 and
March 2, 2019,” 38 North, a website specializing in North Korea analysis, said
in a report about the Tongchang-ri facilities on Tuesday.
“On the launchpad, the rail-mounted transfer
building is being reassembled,” it said. “At the engine test stand, it appears
that the engine support structure is being reassembled.”
Beyond Parallel, a website run by the
Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, published a
report with similar assessments on Tuesday.
“Commercial satellite imagery acquired on
March 2, 2019, shows that North Korea is pursuing a rapid rebuilding of the
long-range rocket site,” it said. The renewed activity “may indicate North
Korean plans to demonstrate resolve” after the Hanoi summit, it said.
Officially, North Korea says it no longer
needs to carry out nuclear or missile tests because it has finished developing
its nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missiles and begun
mass-producing them. But some Western officials and analysts still doubt that
the country has mastered the technologies needed to reliably strike a target
across an ocean with a missile.
In his Singapore meeting with Mr. Trump, Mr.
Kim made a vague commitment to “work toward complete denuclearization of the
Korean Peninsula.” But the North has since balked at taking specific actions
toward dismantling its nuclear and missile programs, criticizing what it called
Washington’s “unilateral, gangster-like demand for denuclearization” and
insisting that it will not move toward denuclearization unless the United
States takes “corresponding” steps.
