SEOUL – North Korea has completed preparations for another nuclear test in a previously unused tunnel at its Punggye-ri site, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported on Monday (Sept 12).
The North last Friday conducted its fifth and most powerful atomic test, just eight months after its previous one.
“We have detected signs that North Korea has finished preparations to conduct a nuclear test at any time in the third tunnel at its Punggye-ri test site,” Yonhap quoted an unidentified Seoul government official as saying. “The intelligence authorities in Seoul and Washington are keeping close tabs.”
South Korea’s Defence Ministry said on Monday that North Korea is always ready for an additional nuclear test at any time. “North Korea has a tunnel where it can conduct an additional nuclear test,” Mr Moon Sang Gyun, a spokesman at the ministry, told a news briefing.
Yonhap did not indicate what activities had been detected at the test site in the north-east of the country, the venue for all five nuclear tests.
In a statement hailing the “success” of its test last Friday, the North vowed to take “further measures” to increase its nuclear strike force “in quality and in quantity”.
The yield from last Friday’s test was estimated at 10 kilotonnes, almost twice as much as the one Pyongyang conducted only eight months ago.
The North also boasted that the test was of a nuclear warhead that could be mounted on a missile.
The United Nations Security Council agreed last Friday to start work on new measures – even though five sets of UN sanctions since the first nuclear test in 2006 have failed to halt the North’s nuclear drive.
AFP, Reuters
