Washington: Within days of announcing a planned second summit between the US President Donald Trump and North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un, reports surfaced about a secret North Korean ballistic missile base, some 160 kilometres of northwest of Seoul which also happens to be the country’s strategic missile force headquarters reported The Washington Post.
The report, released on Monday by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, reveals that it is one of the 20 reported missile operating bases.
This gives further proof and evidence that North Korea is in no mood to dismantle its weapons facility and denuclearisation.
"North Korea is not supposed to have these ballistic missile bases. Of course they have them and have not disclosed them," said Victor Cha, one of the report's authors.
Trump and Kim Jong Un are scheduled to meet again in February for a 2nd summit to find a more rational and moral ground on denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula, which more or less dried out after the historic summit in Singapore last year.
The US-based think tank author believes that North Korea isn't interested in negotiations about their actual capabilities.
Trump remains confident about his negotiating skills which he claims can bypass the diplomats stalled talks over achieving more common ground and strike a deal for North Korea to relinquish a nuclear weapons program.
The think tank report describes in detail about the 2nd of the 13 identified bases out of the 20 reported and undeclared bases.
130 miles north of the DMZ, the Sino-Ri base serves as one of the first bases for the country's most widely deployed ballistic missile, the Nodong medium-range ballistic missile. The KPA is responsible for all ballistic missile test.
Unlike other known North Korean ballistic missile operating bases, which are "nestled within narrow and steep mountain valleys," the main parts of this base are "distributed within a shallow valley and rolling hills," the report said.
The base's four square miles comprise several small villages, including the one for which the facility is named.
