Reports of small earthquakes near a nuclear site in North Korea

South Korea said a series of small natural earthquakes struck near North Korea’s closed nuclear test site, highlighting geological instability in the region as Pyongyang hints it may resume testing for the first time since 2017.

At least four earthquakes have hit the area in the past five days, according to the Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA) in Seoul.

The last earthquake, with a magnitude of 2.5, was on Tuesday morning, with an epicenter 36 kilometers from the Bangui Ri nuclear test site. Two earthquakes of magnitude 2.3 were reported in the area on Monday and another of magnitude 3.1 on Friday.

Punggye-ri in northeastern North Korea is the country’s only known facility for conducting nuclear tests. The last known test of the weapons took place in September 2017, when North Korea detonated its sixth and largest nuclear bomb, claiming it was a thermonuclear weapon.

In the weeks following that explosion, experts pointed to a series of tremors and landslides near the nuclear test base as a sign that the Big Bang had destabilized the region, which had previously not recorded natural earthquakes.

After such an earthquake in 2020, South Korean government experts said the nuclear explosions appeared to permanently alter the geology of the area, while some experts raised concerns that radioactive contamination could be released if North Korea used the site again.

Seismic activity from nuclear testing is not unusual, said Frank Babian, a retired US analyst, and it has been documented at other major nuclear test sites such as the Nevada Test Site in the United States and the former Soviet Union’s Semipalatinsk site in Kazakhstan. Los Alamos National Laboratory in the United States.

“Such earthquakes should not prevent the Punggye-ri nuclear test from being used again in the future,” he said. “The only difference is that any future testing will be limited to previously unused tunnels only.”

The entrances to those tunnels were blown up in front of a small group of foreign media invited to witness the demolition when North Korea closed the site in 2018, declaring its nuclear force complete. North Korea has rejected calls for international experts to inspect the lockdown.

Leader Kim Jong Un has said he is no longer bound by a moratorium on testing, and the country hinted in January that it was considering resuming tests of nuclear weapons or long-range ballistic missiles due to the lack of progress in talks with the United States and its allies.

Since the shutdown, monitoring groups said satellite imagery so far shows no major signs of activity in Punggye-ri other than routine security patrols and maintenance.

(Reporting by Josh Smith; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)

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