North Korean leader Kim Jong-un looks on as North Korean nuclear tests are performed. (Photo: AP)
South Korea’s Defense Ministry said Tuesday they “detected various types of activities at Punggye-ri,” raising concerns that more North Korean nuclear tests could be planned ahead of President Obama’s trip to the region. Punggye-ri is the test site in northeastern North Korea, and could be the location the regime plans to celebrate the Friday anniversary of the founding of the North Korean army.
The Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo reported that witnessed had alarmingly observed what they described as “a very brisk movement of vehicles and people in and around” the site. The paper said that it did not necessarily appear a nuclear test was imminent, but “I don’t think it’s physically impossible for the North, if it has the political will, to do it to coincide” with President Obama’s trip to Japan and South Korea scheduled for Friday and Saturday.
Since 2006, three North Korean nuclear tests were conducted underground at Punggye-ri. However, the time-frame is a bit misleading, because the most recent of these tests was carried out back in February 2013.
The tension on the Korean peninsula has been increasing as of late. In late March, South Korean Marines returned artillery fire across a disputed sea border after North Korean shells from a live fire drill fell into the water South of the frontier. North Korea fired 500 rounds of artillery shells over more than a 3-hour period.
While most of the ordinance fell North of the boundary, nearly a fifth — or, about 100 of — fell south of the sea boundary, according to South Korean Defense Ministry spokesman Kim Min-seok.
In response, South Korea fired 300 shells into North Korean waters.
Meanwhile, on March 29, just a few days before the incident, a North Korea envoy told diplomats to “mind your own business” during a vote to punish the regime for crimes against humanity at a United Nations human rights meeting in Geneva. The vote took place in response to a U.N. report released back in February, which called for an international criminal investigation into human rights violations by the oppressive-leftist North Korean regime.
