What can be said about North Korea following through with a seeming concession out of the Singapore summit?
On Monday, Joseph S. Bermudez Jr. at 38 North published a series of new satellite images taken in July of North Korea’s Sohae Satellite Launching Station that show dismantlement activity around at least two facilities there.
The images show changes to a staging, or processing, building near the rocket launch gantry used by North Korea for its space launch vehicles (SLVs); this building is used to assemble SLVs.
Separately, North Korea has dismantled part of the static liquid-propellant engine vertical testing stand — a concession promised by Kim Jong Un to U. S. President Donald J. Trump at the June 12 summit meeting in Singapore. (Trump claimed he asked Kim to dismantle the test stand, but subsequent reporting made clear that this concession was likely prepared by North Korea.)
Both developments are a positive sign of momentum in the post-Singapore diplomatic process between the United States and North Korea, which has seen its fair share of turbulence recently. Notably, U. S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s trip to Pyongyang earlier this month did not go particularly well, with North Korea chiding him after-the-fact for making unilateral disarmament demands during talks.
Nevertheless, the imagery shows that North Korea began its dismantlement activity following Pompeo’s trip, suggesting that there may have been an unpublicized agreement between the two sides. If North Korea had prepared the offer concerning the engine test stand at Sohae for Singapore, it likely had an ask in mind to follow through.
A U. S. concession isn’t immediately apparent; the dismantlement activity has coincided, to the contrary, with stepped up calls by the United States for UN Security Council sanctions enforcement. On Monday, the U. S. Department of the Treasury published an additional North Korea-focused sanctions enforcement advisory, too.
