World and Nation

Satellite shows North Korea has upgraded launch station

SEOUL, South Korea — Recent commercial satellite imagery indicates that North Korea has finished upgrading its main satellite launching station, which is widely believed to be a test site for its intercontinental ballistic missile program, a U.S. research institute said Wednesday.

Construction had been underway at the Sohae Satellite Launching Station in Tongchang-ri in northwestern North Korea since late last year. Work included modifying the gantry tower and launchpad, which analysts said would give North Korea a facility to launch a longer-range rocket that could carry a heavier payload.

North Korea launched its Unha-3 rocket from Sohae in December 2012, putting a small satellite into orbit. The launch increased fears that the country was inching toward acquiring the ability to build an intercontinental ballistic missile with a nuclear warhead.

“North Korea is now ready to move forward with another rocket launch,” the U.S.-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University said in a report Wednesday. “Should a decision be made soon to do so in Pyongyang — and we have no evidence that one has — a rocket could be launched by the end of 2014.”

If such a decision is made, the most likely candidate remains the Unha-3 rocket, it said, since “a much larger rocket, reportedly under development, is at least several years from becoming operational.”

The U.S.-Korea Institute is one of the organizations that monitor North Korea’s nuclear and satellite launching sites. In its latest report, it said that imagery from mid-September showed tanks near the propellant storage buildings at the launchpad for the first time since the 2012 launch. The exact purpose of this activity was unclear, it said.

The institute said that technicians at Sohae had also been conducting a series of engine tests for North Korea’s KN-08 road-mobile intercontinental ballistic missile over the past couple years. The KN-08 has never been launched, although it has been featured in military parades in Pyongyang.

The U.S.-Korea Institute said it had captured no sign of engine tests for a new rocket, bigger than the Unha-3, which North Korea was said to be developing.

North Korea’s launching of a rocket in 2012 and its third nuclear test in February last year prompted the United Nations to tighten sanctions against the country.

Under U.N. resolutions, North Korea was banned from testing technology used to develop ballistic missiles or nuclear weapons. North Korea has vowed to build more powerful rockets and more sophisticated nuclear weapons as a deterrent against the United States.

Rocket tests at the Sohae site, coupled with nuclear tests in Punggye-ri in the northeast, are crucial parts of a North Korean effort to develop a long-range missile that would be powerful enough to reach the U.S. mainland, as well as a nuclear warhead small enough and advanced enough to be fitted onto such a missile.