This satellite image, provided by U.S. research monitoring website 38 North on Jan. 11, 2018, shows the nuclear test site in the Punggyeri region in North Korea on Dec. 28, 2017. The website claimed North Korea has carried out significant tunneling on the west side of its main nuclear test site, saying these activities underscore Pyongyang’s continued efforts to maintain the site’s potential for future nuclear testing. (Yonhap)
Like I have always said these North Korean defector accounts should be taken with some skepticism since they are impossible to confirm. However, there undoubtedly negative effects happening around the Punggye-ri nuclear test site:
North Korea’s nuclear test site in Kilju, North Hamgyong Province is turning into a wasteland after six underground nuclear tests, according to witness accounts.
North Koreans who defected from the region said 80 percent of trees that are planted die, underground wells have run dry and babies are being born with defects.
The Research Association of Vision of North Korea, which includes North Korean defectors, interviewed 21 defectors who used to live in Kilju in the last couple of years.
“I heard from a relative in Kilju that deformed babies were born in hospitals there,” one defector said. Another said people in Kilju drink water that comes down from Mt. Mantap in Punggye-ri, where the nuclear test site is located, and they are worried about contamination from radiation.
Another said, “I spoke on the phone with family members I left behind there and they told me that all of the underground wells dried up after the sixth nuclear test.”
Suh Kyun-ryul, a professor of nuclear engineering at Seoul National University, said, “Due to the collapsed ground layer, fissures must have formed underneath, leading to contamination of the underground layer and water supply. [Chosun Ilbo]
If this report is true, the fact these workers were tunneling shows that the Kim regime has future plans for more nuclear tests:
A South Korean scientist shows seismic waves taking place in North Korea on a screen at the Korea Meteorological Administration center on September 3, 2017 in Seoul. More than 200 people are believed to have died in underground tunnels after a collapse at North Korea’s Punggye-ri nuclear facility.
More than 200 people are believed to have died in underground tunnels after a collapse at North Korea’s Punggye-ri nuclear facility.
The test site was reportedly badly shaken by the aftermath of the country’s sixth nuclear test, a 100-kiloton hydrogen bomb roughly seven times more powerful than the atomic bomb the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.
North Korean sources told Japanese television channel Asahi TV that the collapse occurred in October during the construction of an underground tunnel at the facility.
Around 100 workers were stuck underground and a group that was sent to their rescue were also buried after another collapse, causing a total death toll of around 200.
A series of small-scale earthquakes that followed the September 3 test indicated the facility, built south of the Mantapsan mountain, may no longer be stable enough to conduct further tests. [Newsweek]
You can read more at the link, but I wonder how many of the workers killed were just forced laborers from the regime’s system of gulags?
Considering all the recent earthquakes and landslides at Punggye-ri these Chinese scientists are probably correct:
Researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Geology and Geophysics briefed a North Korean delegation in Beijing late last month on the threat of an implosion at the mountainous Punggye-ri nuclear facility, about 80km from China’s border.
A day after North Korea said it detonated a hydrogen bomb at the Punggye-ri facility on September 3, a senior Chinese nuclear scientist warned that future tests at the facility could blow the top off the mountain, causing a massive collapse. The scientist said radioactive waste could bleed from cracks or holes at the site and be blown across the border.
Two days after the briefing in Beijing, North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho announced suddenly at the United Nations in New York that Pyongyang might consider detonating a “most powerful” hydrogen bomb over the Pacific Ocean. (………)
A researcher studying the radioactive risk from the North Korean nuclear programme at Peking University said China could no longer tolerate another land-based explosion.
“China cannot sit and wait until the site implodes. Our instruments can detect nuclear fallout when it arrives, but it will be too late by then. There will be public panic and anger at the government for not taking action,” the researcher said.
“Maybe the North Koreans themselves have realised that the site cannot take another blow. If they still want to do it, they have to do it somewhere else.” [South China Morning Post]
A ROK defense source is saying that the North Koreans may have tested their way out of a viable nuclear test site:
A satellite photo of a North Korean region near its Punggry-ri nuclear test (R), provided by 38 North, indicates landslides there following the Sept. 3 test. (Yonhap)
Even if North Korea wants to conduct another nuclear test, it may be facing a big hurdle to preparations at its testing site amid signs of topographic damage from the previous experiment, an informed South Korean defense source said Monday.
“The possibility of North Korea’s additional provocations remains open all the time,” the source said in response to the weeks-long break in its belligerent acts, as the South’s Defense Minister Song Young-moon visited the Philippines to participate in the ASEAN Defense Ministers’ Meeting (ADMM)-Plus session.
The Kim Jong-un regime may be weighing the technological aspects of its nuclear and missile program and political timing, added the source.
The North passed the Oct. 10 founding anniversary of the powerful Workers’ Party and the opening of China’s communist party congress last week with any provocation. (……)
But it remains unclear whether the North will be able to carry out a seventh nuclear test in the near future amid reports of continued natural earthquakes near the Punggye-ri test area following the Sept. 3 hydrogen bomb test there with the destructive yield of more than 50 kilotons, according to the source.
“If it tries to send a meaningful message to the world with another nuclear test, it would require a more powerful bomb,” added the source. “North Korea will consider whether it will keep testing nuclear weapons there, including a review of topography.” [Yonhap]
This satellite image, provided by U.S. research monitoring website 38 North, shows the nuclear test site in the Punggyeri region in North Korea on April 22, 2017. The Web site said Saturday some movements of equipment were detected through the satellite, an indication that Pyongyang is ready to conduct another nuclear test at any time. (Yonhap)
