AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE,
SEOUL: South Korean officials on Friday reacted cautiously to a US news report that North Korea may be preparing to conduct an underground nuclear bomb test.
A senior South Korean foreign ministry official said that “in cooperation with the United States, we always keep a close watch on North Korea's nuclear and missile activities” but declined to comment on the US report.
A spokesman for the National Intelligence Service, South Korea's version of the CIA, also declined to comment on the report.
Analysts here said the reclusive communist state might pretend to prepare a nuclear test to bluff the United States into looking afresh at stalled negotiations over North Korea's nuclear programme.
Baek Seung-Joo, the chief of the North Korea Research Team at the Korea Institute for Defence Analyses, said North Korea might be trying to press Washington to soften its stance toward Pyongyang.
“It is one thing that North Korea might be tempted to leverage concerns over its nuclear drive to wrest concessions from the United States by pretending to carry out a nuclear bomb test, but it is another that it actually carries it out,” he said.
“The current situation is simply too unfavorable for the North to do it,” he added.
He noted that Pyongyang has sought to mend ties with Beijing following North Korea's missile launches in July, which provoked international anger and condemnation resulting in a UN Security Council resolution endorsed even by China, its top ally.
“Testing a nuclear bomb means Pyongyang will have to go back on these diplomatic efforts to improve ties with Beijing. It will also have to risk facing unbearable consequences including military sanctions,” Baek said.
“Pyongyang may like brinkmanship but it does not want to fall over a brink,” he said.
ABC television network said Thursday that the communist state may be preparing an underground nuclear test, quoting US officials.
“It is the view of the intelligence community that a test is a real possibility,” the network quoted a senior US State Department official as saying.
A senior military official told ABC that an unidentified US intelligence agency had recently observed “suspicious vehicle movement” at a suspected North Korean test site.
The activity included the unloading of large reels of cable outside an underground facility called Pungyee-yok in northeast North Korea, it said.
ABC said cables can be used in nuclear testing to connect an underground test site to observation equipment.
It said the intelligence had been brought to the attention of the White House last week but cautioned that it was “not conclusive.”
An imminent nuclear test was predicted in North Korea last year but no test occurred.
ABC said underground nuclear tests are “notoriously difficult” to detect ahead of time and noted that the United States had failed to predict nuclear tests by India and Pakistan in 1998.
North Korea claims to have built nuclear weapons and sparked international alarm last month by test-firing seven ballistic missiles.
