North Korea Said to Be Preparing for Nuclear Test
By CHOE SANG-HUN
OCTOBER 20, 2015
SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea’s National Intelligence Service said it believed that North Korea was preparing for another nuclear test, but not in the near future, according to lawmakers who attended a closed-door parliamentary session with officials from the spy agency on Tuesday.
The legislators Lee Cheol-woo and Shin Kyoung-min, who briefed members of the South Korean news media on the session, provided no other details except that South Korea was monitoring the North’s nuclear facilities through “human” and “technological” means.
The spokesman’s office at the intelligence service refused to comment on the lawmakers’ briefing.
North Korea conducted three nuclear tests between 2006 and February 2013, provoking sanctions from the United Nations Security Council. Analysts in the region have previously said that the North might conduct a fourth test to master the technology to build a nuclear warhead small enough to mount on an intercontinental ballistic missile, although the North claims it already has such know-how.
In a report posted on Sept. 18 on the website 38 North, which focuses on the North, the analyst Jack Liu said that commercial satellite imagery from Sept. 7 had shown no sign of nuclear test preparations at the Punggye-ri Nuclear Test Site in northeast North Korea.
During their summit meeting in Washington last week, President Obama and President Park Geun-hye of South Korea warned against another nuclear test by the North and urged the country to rejoin the long-suspended six-nation talks on ending its nuclear program.
North Korea has insisted that the United States first agree to negotiate a peace treaty with the North to replace the 1953 Korean War armistice, which left the Korean Peninsula technically in a state of war. Unless Washington accepts such negotiations, the North said, it would continue to expand its nuclear weapons program.
