ED Imminent nuclear test

Tepid response

to provocation is no longer tenable

There are clearer signs that North Korea may conduct another nuclear test ahead of the meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping April 6 and 7.

The U.S.-based North Korea monitoring website 38 North said Tuesday that its satellite imagery of the Punggye-ri nuclear test site indicates that the North’s nuclear test preparations are in their final stages. The images, taken March 25, showed up to four vehicles or equipment trailers continuously present at the entrance to the underground test site, with communication cables laid on the ground, 38 North said.

Seoul’s military also confirmed this view, noting that Pyongyang is capable of carrying out a nuclear or missile test whenever Kim Jong-un orders one. If the rogue state conducts the test, it will be its sixth. Some pundits here speculate that the North might detonate multiple nuclear bombs simultaneously as Pakistan did in 1998.

With another blast, North Korea could try to rattle the South in the run-up to the May 9 presidential election. Or the North might seek to embarrass the new U.S. president who has tweeted that its goal of possessing an intercontinental ballistic missile “won’t happen,” before his meeting with Xi.

But it’s too early to hastily conclude that there will be another nuclear test. The chance is that the reclusive regime in Pyongyang could act after assessing the outcome of the Trump-Xi meeting by ramping up tensions with its intentional exposure of nuclear test preparations.

In that case, the North might conduct its sixth nuclear test around the 105th anniversary of the birth of its founder Kim Il-sung on April 15 or a meeting of its rubber-stamp Supreme People’s Assembly on April 11. Kim Jong-un could aim to maximize the North’s nuclear blast yield before a new administration is in place in Seoul.

South Koreans cannot help but feel frustrated at the fact that there is little they can do, though another blast is imminent.

Seoul, Washington and Tokyo can join forces to get the United Nations to issue a strong prior warning by suggesting concrete evidence that the North is about to violate U.N. resolutions. One can hope that the imminent test will be averted if China, North Korea’s de facto sole ally, acts decisively. But if the past is any guide, these expectations are dubious.

Given that the North’s other provocation is intolerable, our approach to this tormenting issue should be totally different after the sixth nuclear test. Our tepid response, relying solely on the U.N.’s tougher sanctions, is no longer tenable.

There must be stepped-up efforts to enhance our anti-missile shield across the board. This is, of course, not to say that we have to exclude dialogue. The bottom line is that we have to at least brace for the North’s nuclear-tipped missiles.