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According to a leading monitor, a widely-covered report on the alleged development of ballistic missile sites by North Korea has misconstrued the conclusions of the report on which it is based.
The 38th North group of the Stimson Center issued a comment criticizing what he called a "misleading story" featured the day before in The New York Times . The newspaper cited satellite images badyzed by experts Joseph S. Bermudez Jr., Victor Cha and Lisa Collins to badert that North Korea was continuing its ballistic missile program by working on secret launch sites despite public badurances given by Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un to President Donald Trump.
Leon V. Sigal, director of the cooperative security project in Northeast Asia at the Social Science Research Council and former member of the editorial board of the Times explained Tuesday in a commentary of 38 North that the three researchers not such a claim. "Sigal noted that the initial report even mentions that" the base for Sakkanmol missile operations and 15 others have been observed for a long time by US intelligence services, including 13 by Bermudez himself. "
"Far from continuing its ballistic missile program" Bermudez notes that "only minor infrastructure changes have been observed" on this particular site since Kim Jong Un came to power in December 2011, "added Sigal.
Sigal wrote that some of the conclusions of Times may very well be accurate, they may not were not supported by the conclusions of the initial report. Bermudez, who has contributed a lot to 38 North, said in a newspaper that "any missile launched on these bases can take a nuclear warhead". Nevertheless, Sigal stressed that "it seems more likely that the missiles are equipped with conventional weapons and are part of the efforts of the DPRK to fight against the conventional superiority of the Republic of Korea," using acronyms for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and the Republic of Korea, respectively.
"There is nothing left to do to negotiate the constraints and eliminate the nuclear threats and missiles of North Korea without exaggerating them and to accuse Pyongyang of bad faith prematurely or to call into question the wisdom of President Trump. to have seriously tried to do nuclear diplomacy, "Sigal concluded.
Trump himself commented on the report, relying on social media on Tuesday to attack what he thought was an inaccurate reading of the situation.
"The history of New York Times on the development of missile bases for North Korea is inaccurate: we know the sites under discussion very well, nothing new – and nothing happens without Abnormal way, just more fake news, I'll be the first to let you know if things are going wrong! "tweeted the president.
Trump has expressed confidence in Kim's promise to denuclearize the first-ever US-North Korean summit held in Singapore in June, despite increasing skepticism At the last sign of slowing negotiations, a meeting scheduled last Thursday between the secretary Mike Pompeo and the vice chairman of the Central Committee of Workers Party, North Korea, Kim Yong Chol, was abruptly annulled.
Although Mr. Kim committed to denuclearization in Singapore, he was not known to have promised to limit his ballistic missile program. North Korea, however, demolished and dismantled other key military sites and returned the remains of US soldiers killed during the war. the 1950s Korean War, released American prisoners and suspended all nuclear and ballistic missile tests, as many key discussion topics for the Trump administration.
The United States, in turn, suspended some joint exercises. Ises and his ally, South Korea, but refused to lift the sanctions or establish an official peace treaty against the decades-long conflict that divided the Korean peninsula according to the ideological lines of the Cold War era. In what appeared to be a growing divide with Washington, Seoul launched a number of joint diplomatic and military initiatives alongside Pyongyang, including disarming the joint security zone of their common border in late October.
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