South Korean military says North Korea appears poised to conduct nuclear and ICBM tests

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korea’s military intelligence agency told lawmakers Wednesday that North Korea has likely completed preparations for its seventh nuclear test and is close to test-firing a long-range missile capable of reaching the United States.

In a closed-door hearing, the agency also said some advance units of North Korean troops sent to Russia may have arrived at battlefronts as the forces prepare to move to the Kursk region, where Russia has struggled to push back a Ukrainian incursion, according to two lawmakers who attended the meeting.

A senior South Korean presidential official, who spoke on condition of anonymity during a background briefing, said Seoul and its allies assess that the number of North Korean troops now dispatched in Russia is at least 11,000. More than 3,000 of them are believed to have moved toward combat zones in western Russia, the official said, without specifying the locations.

Earlier this month, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol told The Associated Press that he expected North Korea to stage major provocations like nuclear and intercontinental ballistic missile tests around the U.S. election to dial up pressure on Washington and its allies.

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North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has also flaunted his military nuclear program in recent months, testing various missile systems and disclosing a secretive facility for producing weapons-grade uranium in September.

South Korea’s Defense Intelligence Agency believes that North Korea has finished preparations to conduct a nuclear test at its testing ground in the northeastern town of Punggye-ri, with the detonation likely to be carried out at tunnel No. 3, said Lee Seong Kweun, one of the lawmakers who attended the hearing. North Korea conducted its sixth and last nuclear test in 2017.

The agency also said it’s detecting signs that the North will soon be ready to test launch an ICBM designed to reach the U.S. mainland, including the placement of a launch vehicle and a missile, said Lee and fellow lawmaker Park Sunwon. The agency believes the ICBM test could take place some time in November.

“We cannot specify the exact location but the transporter-erector launcher has been deployed at a certain area where it could be anticipated that an ICBM test aimed at verifying atmospheric re-entry technology could be conducted,” Lee added.

All of North Korea’s ICBM tests since 2017 have been conducted at a high angle to avoid the territory of neighbors. Experts have said the North may eventually seek to flight test its weapons at an angle closer to a normal ballistic trajectory to verify whether the warhead would survive the harsh conditions of atmospheric re-entry.

The re-entry vehicle technology is considered one of the few remaining technological obstacles North Korea needs to overcome to obtain functioning long-range missiles.

Tensions on the Korean Peninsula have worsened since 2022 after Kim used Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a distraction to accelerate the growth of his nuclear weapons and missile program.