US assesses that North Korea may be ready to conduct underground nuclear test this month

Helen Stephens5 May 2022

Read Time:2 Minute, 1 Second

The assessment concludes that Kim Jong Un’s government is making preparations at the Punggye-ri nuclear test site and could be ready to conduct a test by the end of the month. Signs of personnel and vehicle activity at the site have been seen through satellite imagery, but the officials do not know if the regime has placed nuclear material in one of the underground tunnels at the test site, which the US has been closely watching.

If North Korea conducts a test, it would be the country’s seventh underground nuclear test and the first in nearly five years.

US President Joe Biden is scheduled to visit South Korea and Japan later this month. It wouldn’t be the first time the threat of a nuclear test has loomed over a presidential visit: North Korea was preparing for a test in 2014 when President Barack Obama visited South Korea, and in 2016, North Korea conducted a nuclear test shortly after Obama and other world leaders departed Asia following a summit.

Last month, CNN reported that satellite imagery showed North Korea was tunneling again at its remote underground nuclear test site to potentially shorten the time it needed to conduct its next test.

North Korea has conducted six previous nuclear tests at the site, which lies north of Pyongyang, most recently in September 2017. In addition to its preparations for a possible nuclear test, North Korea has conducted repeated ballistic missile tests this year — the latest missile launch occurring on Wednesday.

According to the satellite imagery, the crosscut tunnel at the test site intersects with one of the main tunnels beyond the entrance, meaning there is a shorter distance to the underground launch area. In 2018, North Korea blew up the original entrance to the tunnel but likely did not destroy the entire underground structure.

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told reporters Wednesday the Pentagon was “very deeply concerned” by North Korea’s missile tests, adding that the US and international community has condemned the provocations.

“There’s never a good time quite frankly for the DPRK to conduct these kinds of tests,” Kirby said. “We continue to call on the North to stop these provocative tests and to be willing to sit down, as we have offered we would be willing to do without pre-condition, and to discuss a diplomatic way forward here to de-nuclearize the North.”

CNN’s Jeremy Herb, Kevin Liptak and Zachary Cohen contributed reporting.