North Korea’s nuclear program rapidly advancing, latest test reshaped mountain

Seoul: Latest nuclear test by North Korea which was conducted on 3rd September was so powerful that it sinks 85-acre area on the peak of the mountain. This mountain was located above the tunnels where the test was done. This was confirmed by the new radar satellite images.

The test was conducted in the complex of tunnels at its Punggye-Ri site. The mountain which is reshaped after the test is Mount Mantap.

Satellite images which are captured before and after the nuclear test confirm that it was powerful enough to reshape mountain.

Read also: North Korea threatens to ‘sink’ Japan, turn US to ‘ashes’

According to the report published in Washington Post, Jeffrey Lewis, head of the East Asia Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in California said that there is a significant change in the elevation of Mount Mantap’s peak.

“You can see that the explosion visibly displaces the mountain, which demonstrates both how large the explosion was but also that it occurred in the same tunnel complex as the preceding four nuclear tests”,  Lewis wrote on the Arms Control Wonk website.

He further wrote, “This is useful because the relationship between the size of the explosion and the magnitude of the seismic signals is sensitive to the overburden — how much rock is above the explosion.”

Airbus, a space technology company took the images using its TerraSAR-X satellite. These images show the change in the elevation of the mountain.

It may be mentioned that North Korea’s latest nuclear test was most powerful than it has tested so far. It is 17 times more powerful than the bomb that detonated over Hiroshima.

Melissa Hanham, Senior Research Associate at Center for Nonproliferation Studies said that these images are an additional proof that the latest nuclear test was most powerful as the radar images of last year’s nuclear test did not show any change in the shape of the mountain.

With the increasing threat from North Korea, South Koreans are demanding for their own nuclear weapons. However, President of South Korea, Moon Jae-in talking in an interview ruled out the idea.