North Korea prepares to dismantle nuclear test site

Thomas Maresca | Special to USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption Foreign media arrive for North Korea nuke site closing Foreign media arrive for North Korea nuke site closing

SEOUL – North Korea is expected to dismantle its Punggye-ri nuclear test site over the next few days in a move toward denuclearization ahead of an unprecedented summit between President Trump and the North's leader, Kim Jong Un.

However Trump cast the summit into doubt Tuesday, saying it could be delayed or even canceled.

A small group of international journalists arrived in North Korea on Tuesday to cover the shutdown of the North's key nuclear test site. Reporters and television crews from the United States, United Kingdom, Russia and China flew in from Beijing.

The dismantling ceremony is scheduled to take place between May 23 and 25, depending on weather.

Absent from the media visitors were eight South Korean journalists, who were excluded after having initially been invited by the North.

The relationship between North Korea and South Korea chilled suddenly last week when Pyongyang canceled a scheduled high-level meeting with South Korean officials, citing a joint U.S.-South Korea military exercise as the reason.

South Korean Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon expressed “regrets that South Korean press corps were unable to visit the North due to North Korea’s lack of follow-up measures despite inviting them.”

He said in a statement Tuesday that the North’s pledge to dismantle the site is proceeding as planned and “expects that such action (will) lead to the successful hosting of the North Korea-U.S. summit.”

Trump and Kim were scheduled to meet in Singapore on June 12, but Trump cast new uncertainty on the planned summit Tuesday, saying the date could slide back on the calendar — or it may not happen at all. Pyongyang has threatened to reconsider the summit if the Trump administration pressures North Korea to unilaterally abandon its nuclear weapons.

More: Trump suggests North Korea summit could be delayed

"There's a chance — there's a very substantial chance — it won't work out," Trump said as he met with South Korean President Moon Jae-in at the White House Tuesday.

“You never know about deals," he said. "I’ve made a lot of deals. You never really know.”

Trump's comments came after an April 27 inter-Korean summit between Moon and Kim, which ended in a joint declaration seeking a peace treaty and complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

Kim announced plans to close the Punggye-ri site last month ahead of the summit, saying that nuclear development was complete and further underground testing was unnecessary.

North Korea has been clearing out small buildings and sheds from the site in recent weeks, according to satellite images and analysis from the online Korea journal 38 North.

The dismantling of the site will include “collapsing all of its tunnels with explosions, blocking its entrances, and removing all observation facilities, research buildings and security posts,” according to North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

Punggye-ri, located in the mountainous northeast of the country, is the site where all six of North Korea's nuclear tests have been held.

North Korea’s most recent test in September 2017 was by far its most powerful. A study published earlier this month in the journal Science concluded the explosion was 13 to 16 times as powerful as the bomb the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945. The force of the explosion caused Mount Mantap above the underground site to shift several feet horizontally and collapse around a foot-and-a-half vertically.

There has been speculation that the closing of the site is merely a bit of geopolitical stagecraft since it has already been so badly damaged.

Chinese geologists last month published a report saying the nuclear blast caused an on-site collapse at Punggye-ri, warning of an “environmental catastrophe” if the North tried to use the site again.

Technical experts have not been invited to the decommissioning of the site, raising further questions whether the gesture is for show.

Some observers still see the site's closing as a step forward.

"It's important to welcome this offer even if it is making a virtue out of a necessity because the test site was damaged by recent tests,” said Rebecca Johnson, an arms control expert with the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. She added that experts from the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the world’s main nuclear test-ban body, should also be invited to observe the site.

Joel Wit, director of 38 North and a senior fellow at the Stimson Center, said dismantling the site is not a meaningless gesture, as there are two areas of the installation that have never been used for tests and still contain tunnels.

“In an ideal world, we wouldn't just have journalists observing what's going on,” said Wit. “What (the U.S.) should be doing in the summit is insisting on having experts come in to make sure the sites are dismantled properly.”

Wit added that the move is something "no one would have anticipated four or five months ago. In part, it’s a nice piece of theater. But it's an opening to accomplish something more significant by building on it.”