North Korea dismantles rocket-launch site

A US monitoring group, 38 North, says North Korea has begun to dismantle key rocket-launching sites.

Satellite images appear to show a number of structures at the Sohae rocket facility in the northwest of the country in various stages of being decommissioned.

Pyongyang has long maintained that the site was used only to launch satellites, but it had previously been used to assemble rockets, The Guardian reports, and included a “rocket engine test stand used to develop liquid-fuel engines for ballistic missiles”.

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38 North said the facility had “played an important role in the development of technologies for the North’s intercontinental ballistic missile programme”, and that its decommissioning therefore represented “a significant confidence-building measure on the part of North Korea”.

Adam Mount, a senior fellow and director at the Federation of American Scientists, told CNN that the dismantling of the Sohae facility is a positive move, but not “a major material step toward disarmament or militarily significant restrictions”.

“This is consistent with North Korea's public line, which is that its successful test program is now transitioning to mass production of nuclear and missile systems,” he said. “Dismantling test infrastructure, especially for space launch vehicles, does not change this calculation.”

The Washington Post says the “dismantlement of the facilities at Sohae appears to have taken place without outside experts there to verify it”. North Korea apparently also destroyed its Punggye-ri nuclear test facility in May, but that too remains unverified.