North Korea restoring missile station

North Korea has started to rebuild a long-range rocket launch site it promised to destroy last year at the first summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and U.S. President Donald Trump, South Korea and foreign experts said Tuesday. Construction work is ongoing at the Sohae Satellite Launching Station at Tongchang-ri, which the regime previously had partially destroyed, South Korea’s National Intelligence Service reported Tuesday, according to the South Korean Yonhap News Agency.

Satellite imagery showed the rebuilding began sometime between Feb. 16 and March 2, according to a report from 38 North, a U.S.-based group that studies North Korea. The group said North Korea restored walls on one building and put new roofs on others. The images indicated “rapid rebuilding” of the site, the Center for Strategic and International Studies said, adding, “This facility has been dormant since August 2018, indicating the current activity is deliberate and purposeful.”

Last week, Trump and Kim met in Vietnam for a second denuclearization summit but failed to reach an agreement. In a Tuesday interview with the Fox Business Network, national security adviser John Bolton said the Trump administration would consider ramping up sanctions on North Korea if the country remained unwilling to relinquish its nuclear weapons.