New satellite images reveal activity at unidentified North Korean missile base

North Korea expands key missile base 02:06

 

Washington (CNN) New satellite images obtained exclusively by CNN reveal North Korea has significantly expanded a key long-range missile base located in the mountainous interior of the country, offering yet another reminder that diplomatic talks with the US have done little to prevent Kim Jong Un from pursuing his promise to mass produce and deploy the existing types of nuclear warheads in his arsenal.

The satellite imagery offers evidence that the Yeongjeo-dong missile base and a nearby, previously unreported site remain active and have been continuously upgraded, underscoring the reality of just how far apart Washington and Pyongyang are on the issue of denuclearization despite five months of sporadic talks.

While the base at Yeongjeo-dong has long been known to US intelligence agencies and analysts, researchers at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey told CNN that the images reveal construction on a new facility just seven miles away from the older site that had not been previously publicly identified.

Kim Sets Denuclearization Timeline

(Photo Credit: The White House)

 

The North Korean leader also expresses ‘unwavering faith’ in President Trump.

Proclaiming his ‘unwavering faith’ in President Donald Trump, North Korean dictator Chairman Kim Jong-un has set the date for a third meeting with South Korean President Moon Jae-in, as well as a timeline for denuclearization.

North Korea continues to dismantle missile launch site, but no signs of any moves to scrap nuclear weapons

Satellite imagery from August 3 indicates additional dismantlement activities are ongoing at the Sohae launch facility. Photo: 38 North

 

Satellite images suggest work is continuing to demolish Sohae facilities, but analysts suggest it may want to keep other parts of its arsenal intact for now

North Korea appears to have taken another step towards dismantling its fixed missile launching facilities after the US stepped up the pressure to disarm, but so far it appears to have left other facilities and its nuclear warheads intact.

The hermit state appears to be continuing to take down its key intercontinental ballistic missile facilities (ICBM) at Sohae, located at about 200km (120 miles) northwest of the capital Pyongyang, according to the North Korea monitoring group 38 North on late Tuesday.

U.S. spy agencies: North Korea is working on new missiles

© Planet/James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International… A May 28 satellite image of a building that U.S. analysts believe is a secret uranium enrichment facility near North Korea’s capital.

 

U.S. spy agencies are seeing signs that North Korea is constructing new missiles at a factory that produced the country’s first intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching the United States, according to officials familiar with the intelligence.

Newly obtained evidence, including satellite photos taken in recent weeks, indicates that work is underway on at least one and possibly two liquid-fueled ICBMs at a large research facility in Sanumdong, on the outskirts of Pyongyang, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe classified intelligence.

The China Problem

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Column: North Korea is just a part of the challenge confronting Trump and the United States

“I think I understand why that happened,” President Trump said Thursday, reflecting on a change in North Korean behavior that prompted him to cancel a planned summit with Kim Jong Un in Singapore on June 12. When a reporter asked him to elaborate, the president declined.

Allow me to speculate.

Until recently, the prospects of a summit were high. Experiencing the consequences of debilitating sanctions under President Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign, Kim Jong Un signaled a new openness. North and South Koreans marched together in the opening ceremonies of the Winter Olympics. Kim pledged to suspend missile testing and destroy an already-disabled nuclear facility in advance of talks. And most important, at the beginning of May, Kim freed three American hostages in what Trump would describe as a “beautiful gesture” that “was very much appreciated.”

Then the turn came.

N. Korea will never fully give up nuclear weapons: top defector

North Korea will never completely give up its nuclear weapons, a top defector said ahead of leader Kim Jong Un’s landmark summit with US President Donald Trump next month.

The current whirlwind of diplomacy and negotiations will not end with “a sincere and complete disarmament” but with “a reduced North Korean nuclear threat”, said Thae Yong-ho, who fled his post as the North’s deputy ambassador to Britain in August 2016.

“In the end, North Korea will remain ‘a nuclear power packaged as a non-nuclear state’,” Thae told the South’s Newsis news agency.

Trump: A New Vision of the Middle East

Trump and Macron at the White House. Emulating his French counterpart, the US president kept repeating: “I do what I say.” Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

 

• The US president, branded as “unpredictable,” has received the fiercest criticism; but a foreign policy is measured by its results.

The last Trump-Macron Summit was a masterpiece of communication. The two men multiplied their signs of complicity and intimacy in front of the cameras. To indicate the strength of their relationship, The French president even declared, “We are two Mavericks.” In addition, both criticized the difficulties imposed by the political system, while emphasizing that they have never been politicians to be used, nor were they part of a partisan machine.

Pompeo meets secretly with North Korean leader

US Secretary of State-designate made a top-secret visit to North Korea over Easter weekend to meet with its leader Kim Jong Un, President Donald Trump has confirmed. His mission was to lay the groundwork for his future summit with Kim.  Speaking at his Mar-a-Lago resort on Tuesday, Trump appeared to allude to Pompeo’s secret mission when he said that the US has had “direct talks” with North Korea “at very high levels.” The president didn’t elaborate, but he did mention June as the possible timeline for his summit with the North Korean leader, rather than May as first cited.

Ayatollah Khamenei is lone nuclear holdout after Kim’s invitation to Trump

 

North Korea’s Kim Jong Un invitation to meet US President Donald Trump to talk about denuclearization has left Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei high and dry. He is now the only world ruler still holding out against discussing his country’s nuclear program. Instead, the ayatollah using it as muscle for trying to impose Iran’s will on the United States in the Middle East. “Rocket man” in Pyongyang may have factored into his provocative policies the inevitability of having to face Trump at some point to discuss terms for the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, while preserving his regime. His escalations were countered by the pressure of biting world sanctions, in the imposition of which even China was active. Now, Khamenei can no longer escape the realization that he will have to face the US and renegotiate the changes Trump is demanding for filling in the loopholes in the nuclear deal which Tehran signed with six world powers in 2015.

Trump agrees to meet with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, South Korea says

President Trump responds to a question from a reporter after signing a presidential proclamation on steel and aluminum tariffs Thursday. (Photo: MICHAEL REYNOLDS, EPA-EFE)

 

WASHINGTON — President Trump will meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un by May for high-level talks over the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, a South Korean official said outside the White House Thursday.

The extraordinary and unexpected opening came through shuttle diplomacy by a South Korean delegation arriving in Washington Thursday. Trump heralded the development as a “major announcement” after speaking with the South Korean president.

Trump says South Korea will make major announcement on North Korea

Washington (CNN) President Donald Trump told reporters Thursday that South Korea will make a “major announcement” concerning North Korea at 7 p.m. ET.

It was not immediately clear what the South Korean announcement would entail, but it came after a South Korean delegation came to the White House to brief officials on its most recent talks with North Korea — the most significant talks between the two countries in more than a decade.

Why is China entering a nuclear security pact with Ukraine?

Xinhua News Agency on Dec. 10 reported that China and Ukraine on Dec. 5 signed a cooperative agreement which included this article: China, according to the UN Security Council Resolution 984 and the Chinese government statement on providing security guarantees to Ukraine on Dec. 4, 1994, promises unconditionally not to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear Ukraine, and to provide security guarantees to Ukraine if Ukraine is attacked by nuclear weapons or threatened by such aggression.

Clearly, this is a guarantee for strategic alliance and an unusual nuclear protection umbrella. Ukraine is far from China and in no way affects the latter’s national security. What ,then, is the need for such an agreement?

Roberts: Japan shown U.S. military facilities to confirm ‘nuclear umbrella’

Washington welcomes visits to its nuclear weapons facilities by Japan as a way to provide “firsthand knowledge” of the U.S. nuclear posture and reassurances of its nuclear deterrent, a former senior U.S. defense official says.

“The nuclear umbrella is a centerpiece of the U.S.-Japan security alliance,” Bradley Roberts, a former U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense for nuclear and missile defense policy, said in a written response to The Asahi Shimbun’s questions in early July.

“It is necessary and appropriate that the government of Japan have firsthand knowledge of the U.S. nuclear posture, including both policies and capabilities,” Roberts said.