Pyongyang – North Korea is reportedly restoring facilities at its long-range rocket launch site that it had dismantled as part of disarmament steps last year.
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The development came after a high-stakes nuclear summit last week between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and U.S. President Donald Trump ended without any agreement.
South Korea’s JoongAng Ilbo newspaper reported Wednesday that the country’s spy service gave such an assessment on the North’s Tongchang-ri launch site to lawmakers in a private briefing Tuesday.
An article from 38 North, a website specializing in North Korea studies, cited commercial satellite imagery as indicating that efforts to rebuild some structures at the site started sometime between Feb. 16 and March 2.
Dismantling parts of its long-range rocket launch facility in the northwest was among several steps the North took last year when it entered talks with the United States and South Korea. The site is where North Korea carried out satellite launches in recent years, inviting rounds of sanctions from the U.N. that saw it as disguised test of missile technology.
JoongAng Ilbo cited unidentified lawmakers who attended the briefing as saying that National Intelligence Service director Suh Hoon told them that the structures being restored at the launch site include roofs and doors of buildings.
Suh was quoted as saying that the move is seen as a preparation to restart long-range missile test-launches in the event that nuclear diplomacy completely collapses or to add some structures to blow up the launch site more dramatically in a show of denuclearization commitment when U.S. inspectors visit if negotiations with Washington go well.
The offices of South Korean lawmakers who took part in Tuesday’s briefing couldn’t immediately confirm the newspaper report.
The 38 North report said the rail-mounted transfer building is being reassembled at the launch site. It said two support cranes can be seen at the building, and walls have been erected and a new roof added.
At the engine test stand, the website said it appears that the engine support structure is being reassembled. It said new roofs have been installed on the fuel and oxidizer buildings.
& that’s after the MOTHER OF ALL DEAL-MAKERS just walked away from the summit without a deal,
Yes, i do appreciate that striking a deal with NK’S involves hard & sensitive work, & no side would budge to the other,
BUT, Trump shouldn’t boast of something that he isn’t capable of doing,
Business & leading a country ain’t working the same way, if he’s good of striking business deals it does’t necessarily mean that he’s good in striking political deals,
Though i do commend his willingness & effortless hard work in trying to strike deals,,,
I think the North Koreans never wanted to make a deal in the first place. They just wanted to find out what the US knows about their nukes and their locations. Dictator Kim wasn’t born yesterday.
Kim Jong got the recognition as a world leader that he craves and out conned our very own Conman in Chief. Little Rocketman is showing the master of the art of the deal to be an inept deal maker and a fool.
In Pyongyang they are laughing at our great leader who boasted of having a bigger button.
First Stormy Daniels, and now Rocketman got the best of the stable genius with the yuuge brain!