Satellite images suggest North Koreans were playing volleyball at their nuclear test site last...
WorldViews Analysis
Satellite images suggest North Koreans were playing volleyball at their nuclear test site last weekend
By Adam Taylor April 20 at 11:20 AM
At a time of remarkable tensions over Pyongyang's weapons program, satellite images of North Korea appeared to capture images of multiple volleyball games being played at the country's main nuclear testing site.
The images, taken Sunday by satellite company Digitalglobe and later released by the independent North Korea monitoring project 38 North, appeared to show groups of people playing volleyball at three separate locations at the secretive nuclear facility. The images surprised analysts at 38 North, as they coincided with speculation about North Korean plans to test a nuclear weapon.
Three analysts working with 38 North — Joseph S. Bermudez Jr., Jack Liu and Frank Pabian — published a note Wednesday suggesting that activity at the Punggye-ri Nuclear Test Site appeared to be slowing after two months of intensity. It wasn't just the volleyball, they noted. The North Koreans appeared to be no longer pumping water out of the tunnels used to test weapons, while vehicles and trailers near the entrance to these tunnels appeared to have been moved.
However, the exact status of the site was unclear. The 38 North analysts suggested two possible explanations: that the site has transitioned to a "standby” status, which allows some recreation time, or that Pyongyang was attempting to deceive the international community about the status of the site through a variety of methods, including staged volleyball games.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/04/20/satellite-images-suggest-north-koreans-were-playing-volleyball-at-their-nuclear-test-site-this-weekend/?utm_term=.f4de7fa2bcc6&wpisrc=nl_evening&wpmm=1
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