North Korea may be expanding its underground nuclear test site where the regime has been detonating missiles ten times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb in recent months,
Satellite images show high level of activity at the Punggye-ri Nuclear Test Site, in north west North Korea, indicating that dictator Kim Jong-Un is building another tunnel for missile tests.
They show a ‘routine presence of vehicles and personnel’ and signs of excavation work at the west side of the site, according to US academics.
Building works: This satellite image analysed by 38 North shows increased activity at the Punggye-ri Nuclear Test Site in northwest North Korea
Satellite images taken over recent weeks show ‘consistently high level of activity’ at the Punggye-ri’s West Portal indicating an expansion of the site for more tests, accordinf to 38North, a blog run by the US-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University in Washington DC.
‘This includes a routine presence of vehicles and personnel around the portal, movement of mining carts from the portal to the adjacent spoil pile and signs of fresh spoil being dumped onto the pile,’ a post on their website adds.
Increased excavation work at Punggye-ri was first reported in October by South Korea’s spy agency, which said it believed Pyongyang might be readying two more tunnels at the site.
The North Portal tunnel, where the previous five missiles test have been carried out, has been left ‘mostly dormant and likely abandoned’ possibly due to the damage done by detonations.
The North Portal tunnel was the site of North Korea’s largest nuclear test to date on September 3.
Digging: This image from Novemer shows mining carts by the opening of the West Portal
The images show a ‘routine presence of vehicles and personnel’ and signs of excavation work at the west side of the site
Visiting: North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un made a visit to Mount Paektu last week
Pyongyang claims the September 3 test was a H-bomb – with experts claiming it was an estimated ten times more powerful than the US atomic bomb which was dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.
A sequence of tremors registered since that test has led experts to believe that there was damage caused to the region and that it may have affected nearby active volcano Mount Paektu.
Kim Jong-Un himself paid a visit Mount Paektu last week, which is falsely claimed to be the birthplace of the secretive state’s first dictator, Kim’s grandfather Kim Il-Sung (who was in fact born in the Soviet Union).
Pictures released by the regime show the Kim in the snow at the 9,022ft mountain, located on North Korea’s border with China.
North Korean state media reported on Saturday that the corpulent dictator had scaled Mount Paektu with senior military officials to ’emphasize his military vision’ after completion of the country’s nuclear force.