By KUNA,
Tokyo : North Korea has dug a new tunnel more than 500 meters deep at a nuclear test site in Punggye-ri in North Hamgyong Province, the Seoul-based major newspaper reported Wednesday, citing South Korean intelligence sources.
The North is also reportedly accelerating massive excavation work and construction of a new building at its main nuclear site in Yongbyon, some 90 kilometers north of Pyongyang, the Chosun Ilbo said.
“North Korea seems to be busy digging even in winter when the ground is frozen” at Punggye-ri and Yongbyon, the newspaper quoted an intelligence officer.
Based on an estimate of the amount of earth dug up, the intelligence officer speculated that the North has already dug a cave more than 500 meters deep in Punggye-ri.
“If progress goes on at the current pace, the North will have dug a cave 1 km deep, the depth where it is possible to conduct a nuclear test, between March and May next year,” the officer said.
The North is also carrying out massive construction in Yongbyon.
Experts including Siegfried Hecker, a US nuclear scientist who visited Yongbyon last month, believe that the North is building a 25-30 MW reactor.
South Korean government officials believe the North does not have enough technical wherewithals to build a light-water reactor power plant that uses enriched uranium as fuel and suspect it is now openly attempting to build a highly-enriched uranium facility to produce nuclear weapons.
They also suspect that the North has three or four more undisclosed uranium enrichment facilities in addition to the one in Yongbyon it showed Hecker last month, the newspaper said.
Pyongyang conducted plutonium-based nuclear tests twice, in 2006 and 2009.
South Korea and the US are worried that the North could heighten tensions on the peninsula by using a nuclear threat after the artillery attack on a South Korean island.