Seoul,<\/p>\n
North Korea is carrying out rapid improvements to its nuclear research facility, a monitor said today, despite declaring a commitment to denuclearisation of the peninsula at the Singapore summit.<\/p>\n
The nuclear-armed North\u2019s leader Kim Jong Un promised to \u201cwork toward\u201d the goal at a landmark summit in the city-state earlier this month with US President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n
But the Singapore meeting failed to clearly define denuclearisation or produce a specific timeline towards dismantling the North\u2019s atomic weapons arsenal.<\/p>\n
Trump claimed the process would start quickly, saying last week that \u201cIt will be a total denuclearisation, which is already taking place.\u201d But recent satellite imagery showed that not only were operations continuing at present at the North\u2019s main Yongbyon nuclear site, it was also carrying out infrastructure works, said the respected 38 North website.<\/p>\n
\u201cCommercial satellite imagery from June 21 indicates that improvements to the infrastructure at\u2026 Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center are continuing at a rapid pace,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n
It noted \u201ccontinued operations\u201d at the North\u2019s uranium enrichment plant and several new installations at the site\u2014including an engineering office and a driveway to a building housing a nuclear reactor.<\/p>\n
But continued operations at the site \u201cshould not be seen as having any relationship with North Korea\u2019s pledge to denuclearise\u201d, it added.<\/p>\n
Nuclear officials could be \u201cexpected to proceed with business as usual until specific orders are issued from Pyongyang\u201d, it said.<\/p>\n
The North last month blew up its aged but only nuclear test site at Punggye-ri\u2014where it had staged six atomic tests\u2014in a show of goodwill before the summit.<\/p>\n
But Pyongyang has kept its counsel on the denuclearisation issue since the meeting, although state media have dialled down propaganda against the US, long dubbed the \u201cimperialist enemy.\u201d US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has been pushing for more follow-up talks to flesh out details over.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Seoul, North Korea is carrying out rapid improvements to its nuclear research facility, a monitor said today, despite declaring a commitment to denuclearisation […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35355,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35354"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35354\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35356,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35354\/revisions\/35356"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}