Seoul: North Korea denied planning a nuclear weapons test while a report indicated it's upgrading a rocket launch site, conflicting signs that underscore the challenge of gauging the intentions of new leader Kim Jong-un.
The totalitarian regime is building a new launch pad for firing larger long-range rockets at its Musudan-ri site in the north-east, according to a US university monitoring project on North Korea. The report came after North Korea's Foreign Ministry said last month's botched long-range rocket launch was intended "for peaceful purposes and we never anticipated military measures like a nuclear test."
Kim has shown no sign of abandoning his country's nuclear ambitions five months after succeeding his late father Kim Jong-il. US and South Korean officials have said Kim's government may soon detonate an atomic weapon to rebound from the embarrassment of the failed rocket launch.
"With these preparations, North Korea is just trying to show that it has power but won't use it right now," said Paik Hak-soon, senior research fellow at the Sejong Institute in Seoul. "The only way to be effective is to maintain a believable appearance of power without exercising it."
‘Hostile policy'
Construction at Musudan-ri began last summer and is in its "early stages," the US-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington said on its website, citing satellite images taken on April 29. The new facility resembles a recently completed Iranian missile centre, hinting at a possible connection with Tehran, the report said.
The US must end its "hostile policy," otherwise North Korea will "expand and bolster" its nuclear programme, the spokesman said, according to yesterday's KCNA report. South Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman Cho Byung-jae said the statement left the North's intentions unclear.
"Until now North Korea's words and actions have differed, so we take note of yesterday's statement and will monitor to see how things progress from here," Cho said.
