Foreign diplomats taken to the apparent scene of a mystery explosion in North Korea were shown a large building site and told two blasts occurred, but South Korea on Friday cast doubt on Pyongyang’s explanation.
Suspicions were aroused that a nuclear test could have taken place after South Korea reported last week a massive mushroom cloud was kicked up in an area known to contain storage sites for missiles and explosives.
To prove this was not the case, North Korea on Thursday took a group of foreign diplomats to what it said was the site of the explosion in rugged Kimhyungjik county.
”They went to a huge building site,” said a German diplomat in Pyongyang, who was briefed by the German ambassador to North Korea, Doris Hertramps, who visited the area.
”North Korea explained that there had been two large explosions, one on Wednesday and one on Thursday last week,” he said.
The North said they were controlled explosions to remove a mountain in preparation for construction of a hydro-electric power project.
The diplomat confirmed they had been shown a hydro-electric plant but was unable to confirm evidence of explosions.
”It’s very hard to tell,” he said. ”The ambassador is not a technical expert so we need experts to examine what we have been told and what we have seen.”
South Korea now says it believes no such explosions took place at the site.
It said the diplomats were taken to an area about 60km east of where the suspected blasts were recorded — an area where Pyongyang has previously said it was building a vast dam.
”We suspect there was no blast at all at the site where intelligence authorities originally thought there were indications of a blast,” Vice Unification Minister Lee Bong-Jo told reporters in Seoul.
He said that an earth tremor was recorded on the day of the suspected explosion, but it was found to have originated near Mountain Baikdu on the border with China, about 100km from Kimhyungjik county, and not where the diplomats went.
As for the reported mushroom-shaped clouds, he said they could be explained away as natural phenomena.
A North Korean defector cited in the New York Times this week said the remote area was near a main centre for launching ballistic missiles, which he had visited in the 1990s as part of a military construction unit.
He theorised that any blast could have been an explosion of liquid nitrogen fuel with a missile on the launch pad to celebrate the nation’s 56th birthday on September 8.
The German diplomat said they had seen no evidence of ballistic missiles in their limited time in the region — usually out of bounds to all foreigners, including diplomats and aid agencies.
”They didn’t see anything like that,” he said.
In London, Britain’s Minister for East Asia, Bill Rammell, said British ambassador David Slinn and the other diplomats were allowed to take photographs and the evidence would be carefully analysed.
”The information they gathered will be reported back to technical experts in capitals. We now need to await their findings,” he said.
Rammell was in Pyongyang last week when news of the explosions first surfaced and he was the driving force behind setting up the site visit.
The United States, which is locked in a near two-year stand-off with North Korea over its nuclear weapons drive, has said it is awaiting a readout on the findings.
The group of diplomats comprised officials from the missions of Britain, Germany, Poland, Russia, Sweden, the Czech Republic, India and Mongolia. — Sapa-AFP