North Korea dismantles nuclear test site

North Korea has dismantled its nuclear test site, media ­invited to attend the ceremony said last night.

Vice-President Mike Pence is saluted as he arrives to speak at a commencement ceremony for the US Coast Guard Academy in New London, Connecticut, yesterday. Picture: AP

North Korea has dismantled its nuclear test site, media ­invited to attend the ceremony said last night, in a carefully choreographed move portrayed by the isolated regimen as a goodwill gesture ahead of a potential summit next month with the US.

The conciliatory move contrasted with North Korea earlier calling US Vice-President Mike Pence “ignorant and stupid” for his warnings over the planned summit with Donald Trump, renewing a threat to cancel the talks as the US President said the fate of the historic meeting would be decided next week.

Reporters at the Punggye-ri test site described a series of explosions throughout the day, three of them in entry tunnels to the underground facility, followed by explosions that demolished a ­barracks and other structures.

“There was a huge explosion, you could feel it. Dust came at you, the heat came at you. It was ­extremely loud,” Tom Cheshire, a journalist for Sky News wrote on the British broadcaster’s website.

The test facility is buried inside a mountain in North Hamgyong province, near the border with China, and is North Korea’s only known nuclear test site.

South Korean television in Seoul shows a graphic depicting the demolition of North Korea’s Punggye-ri nuclear test site yesterday.

It has been the staging ground for all six of the North’s nuclear tests, including its latest and by far most powerful one last September that Pyongyang said was an H-bomb.

Experts are divided over whether the demolition will ­render the site useless. Sceptics say the facility has already outlived its usefulness with six successful ­nuclear tests in the bag and can be quickly rebuilt if needed.

In a statement North Korea’s nuclear weapons agency said the site had been dismantled “completely ... to ensure transparency of the discontinuance of nuclear test(ing).”

South Korea welcomed the move. “(We) expect it to serve as a chance for complete denuclearisation going forward,” Noh Kyu-duk, spokesman for the South’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Earlier, Pyongyang’s Vice-Minister of Foreign ­Affairs, Choe Son-hui, lambasted an interview in which Mr Pence warned North Korean leader Kim Jong-un that it would be a “great mistake” to try to “play” Mr Trump. Mr Pence also said North Korea could end up like Libya, whose former leader Muammar Gaddafi was killed by US-backed rebels years after giving up atomic weapons, “if Kim Jong-un doesn’t make a deal”.

“I cannot suppress my surprise at such ignorant and stupid remarks gushing out from the mouth of the US Vice-President. We will neither beg the US for dialogue nor take the trouble to persuade them if they do not want to sit together with us,” Ms Choe said.

She added she would recommend Kim cancel the talks planned for June 12 between him and Mr Trump if the US continued to make such threats. The talks in Singapore are aimed at ridding the reclusive state of its newly acquired nuclear weapons and improving ties after decades of animosity. The summit was announced after months of unusually cordial diplomacy between the historic foes, brokered by South Korea. The new-found bonhomie and the meeting’s chance of success have been thrown into doubt in recent days, with Washington and Pyongyang raising the prospect of cancelling the talks and trading threats. Similar comments comparing North Korea to Libya by US Nat­ional Security Adviser John Bolton drew the first threat by Pyongyang last week to cancel the Singapore meeting.

“Whether the US will meet us at a meeting room or encounter us at nuclear-to-nuclear showdown is entirely dependent upon the decision and behaviour of the United States,” Ms Choe said.

Mr Trump has invested heavily in the success of the planned summit, and so privately most US officials, as well as outside observers, think it will go ahead.

Hand-picked aides, including deputy chief of staff Joe Hagin and deputy national security adviser Mira Ricardel, are travelling to Singapore. They are expected to meet their North Korean counterparts and iron out details of the meeting.

Yet Mr Trump has also become increasingly lukewarm about meeting Kim. “On Singapore we’ll see. It could very well happen,” he said yesterday, adding: “Whatever it is, we’ll know next week.”

He embraced the idea of talks this year. But as the date draws nearer, the gulf in expec­tations between the two sides is coming into sharp relief. Washington made it clear it wanted to see the “complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearisation” of the North. Pyongyang vowed it would never give up ­nuclear deterrence until it felt safe from US aggression.

AFP