North Korea Appears to Be Expanding Nuclear Missile Program
A report by a Washington D.C. think tank suggests North Korea's Kim Jong Un is expanding his country’s nuclear missile program, building new missile hosting facilities at sixteen different locations across the country. The report goes against President Donald Trump’s assertion that the North Korean nuclear weapons crisis is “largely solved,” suggesting that Pyongyang’s nuclear program is bigger than ever before.
The report, put out by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, claims it has identified 13 out of an estimated 20 undeclared North Korean missile bases. The missile bases are home to short range ballistic missiles that threaten U.S. and South Korean forces on the Korean peninsula, medium and intermediate range missile bases that threaten U.S. bases in the Asia-Pacific and Japan, and intercontinental ballistic missiles that directly threaten the United States.
North Korea is believed to have the nuclear materials to manufacture 40 to 60 nuclear weapons, and the missiles to deliver them as far as the United States. The country has at least three intercontinental ballistic missiles, the Hwasong-13, Hwasong-14 and Hwasong-15, all capable of reaching the United States.
The report covers the Sakkanmol missile base in detail. Just fifty miles from the border with South Korea, the base is home to an estimated 9-18 Hwasong-6 short-range ballistic missiles. Sakkanmol has seven underground facilities for the storage and fueling of the liquid-fueled missiles, with enough room to store all of the missile launchers. The missiles are stored underground to protect them from air and artillery attack.
President Donald Trump has repeatedly stated that, following his summer summit with North Korean Kim Jong Un, the Asian country’s nuclear problem is “largely stopped." On Twitter, Trump declared, “There is no longer a nuclear threat from North Korea.”
Kim has agreed to temporarily suspend nuclear and missile tests, to shut down a nuclear testing site, and eventually dismantle the Yongbyon nuclear facility that manufactures the fuel for nuclear weapons-if the U.S. agrees to unspecified demands.
In the meantime it appears North Korea has taken no action, nor has it pledged to do anything about its existing arsenal of nuclear missiles-including ICBMs that can reach the United States-and nuclear weapons. The nuclear threat to the United States, South Korea, and Japan is exactly the same as it was before the Trump-Kim summit.
The New York Times quotes Victor Cha, one of the principals behind the CSIS report, as saying that work on the estimate 20 nuclear facilities has continued on despite diplomatic efforts and Trump’s assertion that “there is no longer a nuclear threat”-making them more dangerous than ever before.
Source: The New York Times
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