Commercial satellite imagery of a facility near Pyongyang suggests that North Korea is preparing to launch a missile or space rocket in the near future.…
Commercial satellite imagery of a facility near Pyongyang suggests that North Korea is preparing to launch a missile or space rocket in the near future.
The images are of a site known as Sanumdong — a facility where North Korea has assembled some of its intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and satellite-launching rockets. The images taken Feb. 22 by DigitalGlobe and shared exclusively with NPR show cars and trucks parked near the facility. Rail cars sit in a nearby rail yard, where two cranes are also erected.
“When you put that all that together, that’s really what it looks like when the North Koreans are in the process of building a rocket,” says Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Project at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, who has studied the images.
News of the activity comes just days after other satellite imagery showed that North Korea has rapidly rebuilt a satellite launch facility on the country’s west coast. Known as the Sohae Satellite Launching Station, the site has been used for several attempted space launches over the years, most recently in 2016. The Sohae facility, sometimes called Dongchang-ri and Tongchang-ri, was partially dismantled after President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un held their first summit in June 2018.
