North Korea has announced in another gesture of good will that it will invite international media to watch on May 23-25 as it blows up its nuclear test site in the run-up to the June 12 summit with the United States in Singapore:
The official Korean Central New Agency said dismantlement of the Punggye-ri nuclear test ground would involve collapsing all of its tunnels with explosions, blocking its entrances, and removing all observation facilities, research buildings and security posts.
“The Nuclear Weapon Institute and other concerned institutions are taking technical measures for dismantling the northern nuclear test ground ... in order to ensure transparency of discontinuance of the nuclear test,” KCNA said.
You can’t call this a bad thing. But it’s not quite a three-hurrah event either:
Research by Chinese geologists suggests that the mountain above North Korea’s main nuclear test site has likely collapsed, rendering it unsafe for further testing and requiring that it be monitored for any leaking radiation.
The findings by the scientists at the University of Science and Technology of China may shed new light on North Korean President Kim Jong Un’s announcement that his country was ceasing its testing program ahead of planned summit meetings with South Korean President Moon Jae-in and U.S. President Donald Trump. [...]
In announcing the plan to shut Punggye-ri last month, Kim said North Korea no longer needed to conduct tests because it had completed its goal of developing nuclear weapons.
Research published by Science two days ago provides more detail about the collapse.
So Donald Trump mars the good news of freeing three American prisoners in North Korea by trashing President Obama for failing to do so, even though two of them were detained after Trump himself had become pr*sident, and by ignoring the fact Obama had gotten 11 prisoners held by North Korea released during the time he was in office. And Kim Jong-un gets credit for publicly blowing up a nuclear test site that he was probably planning to blow up secretly anyway.