North Korea dynamites nuclear test site, media invited to planned event

North Korea has dismantled its sole known nuclear test site in an array of explosions, journalists invited to witness the promised destruction report.

Foreign reporters, including those from the United States, China, Russia, the UK and South Korea, who were present in a safe distance from the Punggye-ri test facility on Thursday, said they had heard multiple explosions, arguably enough for the destruction of the test site.

Earlier this month, Pyongyang said that the site would be “completely” destroyed  between May 23 and 25, depending on weather condition, adding that the country would also allow journalists from a handful of foreign media to “conduct on-the-spot coverage” of the landmark event.

According to South Korean journalists, the site’s North Portal, also referred to as Tunnel No. 2, was dynamited at around 11 a.m. local time.

“There was a huge explosion, you could feel it. Dust came at you, the heat came at you. It was extremely loud,” Tom Cheshire, a journalist for Sky News, also wrote on the British broadcaster’s website.

The Punggye-ri test facility has been the staging ground for all six of the North’s nuclear tests, including its latest and by far most powerful one in September last year, which Pyongyang claimed was an H-bomb.

The carefully choreographed move could be considered an initial step toward denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula over a month after North Korean leader Kim Jong-un declared that he would be suspending the North’s nuclear and missile tests and shut down the nuclear test site to pursue economic growth and peace on peninsula.

North Korea has had controversial military nuclear and ballistic missile programs, which have so far drawn harsh sanctions from the US and the UN.

In late April, Kim and South Korean President Moon Jae-in met in a historic summit at the demarcation line and signed a joint declaration, expressing their interest in the common goal of denuclearization.

Kim and US President Donald Trump were scheduled to meet in a historic summit in Singapore on June 12.

But, Trump on Thursday called off the planned summit, even after North Korea followed through on its pledge to blow up tunnels at its nuclear test site.

“Sadly, based on the tremendous anger and open hostility displayed in your most recent statement, I feel it would be inappropriate, at this time, to have this long- planned meeting,” Trump said in a letter to the North Korean leader.

Trump called it “a missed opportunity” and said someday he still hoped to meet Kim.

A series of US demands and threats — which have offended North Korea — had cast doubt on whether the two sides would meet.

The summit announcement came after several months of unprecedented cordial diplomacy between South and North Koreas, which had been adversaries for decades. Moon has been acting as a go-between in diplomatic efforts for the potential holding of the summit between the US and North Korea — also long-time foes.

Washington, which has been opposed to Pyongyang’s weapons programs, has heavy military presence near North Korea. Until January this year, a string of bellicose rhetoric and counter-rhetoric by Trump and Kim had raised fears of a new war on the Korean Peninsula.

Seoul and Pyongyang had already been reaching out to one another since January. For almost seven decades before that, and since a war in the 1950s, the two Koreas had been in a state of perpetual hostility.