Is North Korea preparing to mark the 110th anniversary of its founder’s birth with a literal bang in the form of a powerful missile or nuclear test?
Maybe, the U.S. special envoy to Pyongyang said Wednesday.
"I think it could be another missile launch, it could be a nuclear test," Kim Sung said in response to a question about what could be in store on the April 15 anniversary, known as the Day of the Sun — the North’s most important holiday.
“We are worried that, in connection with the upcoming April 15 anniversary, that the DPRK may be tempted to take another provocative action. We obviously hope not, but we will be prepared,” he said, using the acronym for North Korea’s formal name.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un could use several key anniversaries next week — including the 110th anniversary of the birth of his grandfather, Kim Il Sung, the country’s founder — to highlight his country’s military advances in the face of crushing sanctions over its nuclear weapons and missile programs.
The North Korean leader will also mark the 10th anniversaries of his assumption of the top positions of first secretary of the ruling party and first chairman of what was the country's highest governing institution on April 11 and April 13, respectively.
The North has traditionally emphasized 10-year anniversaries, meaning it could use a provocation to mark any of those dates, observers say.
On March 24, the North launched an intercontinental ballistic missile, signifying a clear departure from Kim’s self-imposed moratorium on long-range missile and nuclear tests, which had been in place since 2017, and setting the stage for a fresh showdown over the country’s nuclear weapons program.
However, a fresh nuclear test would be a step up the escalation ladder — a step the North appears to be preparing to take.
The U.S. and its allies believe that the North is beginning to make preparations for a possible underground nuclear test for the first time since 2017, when it tested what it said was a thermonuclear weapon.
Researchers have said that test was its most powerful explosion to date, with some estimating that it was equivalent to about 250 kilotons of TNT — an explosion 16 times the size of the bomb the U.S. detonated over Hiroshima in 1945.
Kim hinted in January of a return to major weapons tests, telling ruling party leaders that the North would “reconsider in an overall scale the trust-building measures that we took on our own initiative ... (and) promptly examine the issue of restarting all temporarily-suspended activities.”
Andrew Yeo, a senior fellow and the SK-Korea Foundation Chair in Korean Studies at the Brookings Institution, said a nuclear test appeared increasingly likely.
“I think there is an expectation in Washington that a seventh nuclear test may be coming soon and it would be fitting if he could time it around the Day of the Sun,” Yeo told an online discussion Wednesday. “You would have the ultimate fireworks — the birthday celebration would go out with a bang.”
Kim Sung said while the United States’ repeated attempts at restarting denuclearization talks with the North had fallen on deaf ears, the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden was ready to “discuss any and all issues.”
“We want to make clear to the DPRK that its only viable path forward is through diplomacy,” he said.
Kim Jong Un has dismissed calls for talks, condemning the U.S. offers as a “petty trick.”
Still, the U.S. envoy said the Biden administration is “willing and prepared to address any serious concerns” that Pyongyang may have and that talks with Biden’s predecessor had laid a foundation for moving forward.
Talks between the North’s Kim and then-U.S. President Donald Trump in Singapore in 2018 resulted in a vaguely worded 1½-page joint statement where Kim vowed to “work towards the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” while Trump committed to “provide security guarantees” and take moves toward the normalization of relations.
Biden administration officials have said that the document could provide a starting point for more talks.
“The DPRK finds itself isolated in unprecedented ways and has shut itself off during the COVID pandemic,” Kim Sung said. “Only the resumption of diplomacy can break this isolation, and only then can we pick up the important work that has been done before, building on the Singapore Joint Statement.”
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