[Screenshot captured from 38 North.com]
North Korea is always ready to conduct a fresh nuclear test with little or no warning, although satellite imagery has yet to reveal any signs of test preparations, according to 38 North, the website of a US research institute.
Cross-border tension has been high since Pyongyang made a surprise announcement on January 6 that it successfully tested a hydrogen bomb. There have been South Korean news reports citing intelligence sources that North Korea is probably preparing for its fifth nuclear test.
38 North said that an examination of commercial satellite imagery from late January through early February 2016 revealed few if any signs of test preparations at North Korea's Punggye-ri site.
Yet the recent test showed that the nuclear-armed country "appears to have altered its past test preparation practices in order to make them more difficult to detect", it said.
North Korea "may have tunnels already completed and ready for a test should it decide to move forward", and the January 6 test indicates that it "can now conduct a nuclear test with little or no advance notice based on imagery observations alone", 38 North said.
"While detecting nuclear test preparations is, under the best of circumstances, an inexact art, in the North Korean case, it may be the result of careful planning to avoid detection by commercial satellites as they pass overhead or by instituting a practice of gradual, low-key preparations that take place over months."
아주경제 임장원 기자 = cwlim34@ajunews.com
reporter
Park Sae-jin
swatchsjp@ajunews.com
