North Korean leader Kim Jong Un announced early Saturday morning that the regime no longer needs nuclear tests or intercontinental ballistic missile tests . Kim said Saturday that "under the proven condition of complete nuclear weapons, we no longer need any nuclear tests, mid-range and intercontinental ballistic rocket tests, and that the nuclear test site in northern area has also completed its mission," state-run KCNA reported Saturday. CNN reports:U.S. President Donald Trump welcomed the news, tweeting : "North Korea has agreed to suspend all Nuclear Tests and close up a major test site. This is very good news for North Korea and the World - big progress! Look forward to our Summit." </s> North Korea agreed on Friday to suspend all nuclear tests in anticipation of a meeting with President Trump, according to reports.

The Yonhap News Agency reports North Korean leader Kim Jong Un announced the suspension of missile tests, in addition to the shut down of a nuclear site in the country’s northern region.

“From April 21, North Korea will stop nuclear tests and launches of intercontinental ballistic missiles,” an announcement from the Korean Central News Agency stated.

“The North will shut down a nuclear test site in the country’s northern side to guarantee transparency in suspending nuclear tests.”

The announcement comes as leaders from North and South Korea plan a summit with President Trump in upcoming weeks to discuss the possibility of denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula.

President Trump lauded the move on Twitter saying it is “big progress” and “very good news” for the world.

“North Korea has agreed to suspend all Nuclear Tests and close up a major test site. This is very good news for North Korea and the World – big progress! Look forward to our Summit.”

Watch Alex’s report from last month when N. Korea first asked for a meeting with Trump: </s> Seoul, April 21 (IANS) North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has announced the immediate suspension of nuclear and missile tests, media reports said on Saturday.

“From April 21, North Korea will stop nuclear tests and launches of intercontinental ballistic missiles,” Efe quoted Kim as saying.

North Korea will also “shut down a nuclear test site in the country’s northern side to guarantee transparency in suspending nuclear tests,” the report added.

Having established a nuclear deterrent, North Korea can now turn to overhauling its economy, Kim said.

Pyongyang’s move comes ahead of Kim’s April 27 summit with South Korean President Moon Jae-in in the demilitarized zone that separates the two countries.

The last in-person talks between the leaders of North and South Korea took place 11 years ago.

What will be the first-ever encounter between the leaders of North Korea and the US is expected to happen in late May or early June.

US President Donald Trump, who accepted Kim’s proposal for a meeting after months that saw the two men trade insults and threats, hailed the announcement from Pyongyang.

“North Korea has agreed to suspend all Nuclear Tests and close up a major test site. This is very good news for North Korea and the World — big progress! Look forward to our Summit,” Trump wrote on Twitter. </s> SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea will suspend nuclear and missile tests effective immediately and abolish a nuclear test site in a bid to pursue economic growth and peace on the Korean peninsula, the North's state media said on Saturday, ahead of planned summits with South Korea and the United States.

 North Korea leader Kim Jong Un said his country no longer needed to conduct nuclear tests or intercontinental ballistic missile tests because it has completed its goal of developing nuclear weapons, state media Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said.

 “To guarantee suspension of nuclear tests in a transparent manner, the republic’s northern nuclear test site will be abolished," the KCNA said after Kim convened this year's first plenary session of the Central Committee of the ruling Worker's Party on Friday.

 “The overall projects of the party and the country will be geared towards building of a socialist economy, and all our efforts will be made towards it,” the KCNA said.

 North Korea also said it would engage in talks with the international community, paving the way for the summit with South Korean President Moon Jae-in planned for next week and a meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump in late May or early June.

 Trump on Friday welcomed the statement and said he looked forward to a summit with Kim.

 "North Korea has agreed to suspend all Nuclear Tests and close up a major test site. This is very good news for North Korea and the World - big progress! Look forward to our Summit," Trump said on Twitter.

 North Korea has defended its nuclear and missile programs in the face of worldwide condemnation and sanctions as a necessary deterrent against perceived U.S. hostility. 

 Tensions eased significantly after North Korea's Kim called in a New Year's speech for lower military tensions and improved ties with South Korea. 

 It sent a delegation to the Winter Olympics held in South Korea and agreed to meet with Moon and Trump to discuss denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.

 The ruling party's plenary meeting on Friday was convened to discuss "policy issues of a new stage" to meet the demands of the current "important historic period," the KCNA said.

 

 (Reporting by Cynthia Kim and Soyoung Kim; Additional reporting by Heekyong Yang; Editing by Toni Reinhold) </s> North Korea has announced that it will dismantle its nuclear test site. According to the Associated Press, North Korea's Foreign Ministry delivered a statement delivered through state media Saturday announcing the dismantling will occur between May 23 and 25.

Reuters reports that Punggye-ri nuclear test site has been the location of all of North Korea's six known nuclear tests. At the site, there's a system of tunnels under the mountain Mount Mantap. Journalists from the United States, South Korea, China, Russia and Britain will be invited to watch a special ceremony in which all of the tunnels at the testing ground will be destroyed and observation and research facilities and guard units will be taken down.

The North Korean government will provide journalists with a charter flight from Beijing to Wonsan, North Korea. From there, a train will take them to the test site in the northeast part of the country.

The Associated Press reports that plans to dismantle the site are not new: During his summit with South Korean President Moon Jae-in in April, Kim announced that he would shut it down by the end of May.

In their joint statement released after the summit, Moon and Kim declared that there would be "no more war" on the Korean Peninsula and committed to a goal of "complete denuclearization."

After the summit, Park Hyeong Jung, a senior research fellow at the government-funded Korea Institute of National Unification, told NPR's Anthony Kuhn he was not sure Kim would completely abandon nuclear weapons:

The AP also reports that at a ruling party meeting last month, North Korea announced the plan to close the nuclear testing ground, along with a commitment to suspend all tests of nuclear devices and ICBMs. At that same meeting, however, North Korea said it has been performing a kind of nuclear test classified as "subcritical." The "subcritical" experiments give scientists an opportunity to test weapons without causing an actual nuclear chain reaction and explosion.

Hours after North Korea announced plans for the dismantling ceremony, President Trump tweeted: "North Korea has announced that they will dismantle Nuclear Test Site this month, ahead of the big Summit Meeting on June 12th. Thank you, a very smart and gracious gesture!"

The dismantling ceremony is planned for just under three weeks before June 12, the date Trump is scheduled to meet with Kim Jong Un in Singapore. The meeting will be the first time a sitting U.S. president meets with the leader of North Korea.

Richard Fontaine, who served as a foreign policy adviser to Republican Senator John McCain, told NPR's David Greene the announcement of talks between Kim and Trump is a "game changer," but the escalation of talks to two heads of state opens up a certain degree of diplomatic uncertainty:

"It's a game changer in terms of the diplomacy, certainly. I mean, often these kinds of processes lead up to a presidential-level meeting if they are successful. So you would have lower-level officials work a disarmament process, or something, and then have the heads of state come in and close it if it sort of materialized into something. "This is completely flipping the script on that, and so it will start at the highest possible levels. The upside is that maybe this makes a deal more possible. The downside is if it fails then we've hit the diplomatic cliff and could fall off the other side."

If the dismantling occurs at the end of the month, it will not be the first time North Korea has publicly destroyed a nuclear facility. In 2008, international journalists looked on as a water cooling tower at a facility called Yongbyon was destroyed. According to CNN, officials said it was a location where plutonium was extracted.

In her reporting at the time, CNN correspondent Christiane Amanpour said, "They fired a warning flare and then in three minutes the whole thing came tumbling down in a massive cloud of smoke."

"There was a moment of stunned silence as the magnitude of what had happened sunk in," she added. </s> North Korea appears to be preparing for possible visits by external inspectors to verify that it has shut down its nuclear test site, South Korea’s intelligence agency said on Wednesday. Ruling party lawmaker Kim Min-ki shared the development with reporters after a closed-door audit session by the National Intelligence Service with parliamentarians, reported Yonhap.

“Signs have been detected that North Korea is doing some preparations and intelligence-related activity over a possible visit by outside experts, as it shut down the nuclear test site and demolished some of the missile launching facilities at Dongchang-ri,” the agency told the lawmakers, according to Kim Min-ki.

The agency also said that North Korea continued to engage in hacking attacks to steal information and money, and breaking into email accounts.

Earlier this month, United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had said that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un had agreed to give international inspectors access to the country’s nuclear and missile testing sites. Pompeo had said that the inspectors would visit a missile engine test facility and the Punggye-ri nuclear testing site as soon as the logistics are worked out.

In May, North Korea said it had dismantled its nuclear bomb test site in Punggye-ri as a goodwill gesture before a meeting with US President Donald Trump. During his meeting with Trump in Singapore, Kim promised to work towards denuclearising the Korean peninsula. Both leaders had signed a joint statement in which the US agreed to establish diplomatic relations. </s> North Korea has scheduled a “ceremony” to dismantle its nuclear on May 23-25 ahead of President Donald Trump’s summit with leader Kim Jong Un next month, state media said Saturday.

North Korea’s Foreign Ministry said Saturday that all the tunnels at the country’s northeastern testing ground will be destroyed by explosion and that observation and research facilities and ground-based testing units will also be removed. The dramatic and symbolic event is part of the Hermit Kingdom’s pledge to discontinue nuclear tests.

“The Nuclear Weapon Institute and other concerned institutions are taking technical measures for dismantling the northern nuclear test ground of the DPRK in order to ensure transparency of discontinuance of the nuclear test,” said the announcement. DPRK is an acronym for North Korea’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

The nuclear site that will be dismantled is located in Pukyong, Yonhap News reported.

The announcement comes after Trump said he would hold a summit with Kim in Singapore on June 12. It will be the first meeting ever between a sitting U.S. president and the leader of North Korea.

Kim had revealed plans to shut down the nuclear test site during his summit with South Korean President Moon Jae-in last month.

On Friday, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said North Korea can look forward to “a future brimming with peace and prosperity” if it agrees to quickly give up its nuclear weapons.

The North said they plan to invite journalists from the United States, South Korea, China, Russia and Britain to inspect the process.

North Korea’s six known nuclear tests have taken place in Punggye-ri, a location in the northeastern part of North Korea where a system of tunnels have been dug under Mount Mantap, Reuters reported.

The Associated Press contributed to this report. </s> • North Korea's primary nuclear test site remains "fully operational" and could be used for further testing in the future, according to a report released Monday.
• Monday's report comes after North Korean leader Kim Jong Un made the announcement on April 20 that his regime would cease its nuclear and long-range missile tests and close the mountainous Punggye-ri nuclear test site, where the regime has conducted all six of its nuclear tests.
• Some experts have suggested that another test at the Punggye-ri nuclear test site could totally destroy it and potentially even cause a mountain to collapse.

North Korea's primary nuclear test site remains "fully operational" and could be used for further testing in the future, 38 North, a watchdog dedicated to analyzing the rogue state, warned Monday.

"North Korea’s Punggye-ri nuclear test site, where North Korea has conducted six acknowledged underground detonations is still, as far as we can tell, fully operational," 38 North reported.

Following North Korea's sixth nuclear test in September, commercial satellite imagery reportedly revealed significant tunneling in one area of the site up until early March. This activity appeared to slow down toward the end of March, but did not stop entirely into early April. According to 38 North, this suggests "that either the tunnel was complete and ready for future renewed testing or that the slowdown simply mirrored the ongoing political changes underway."

With that said, some experts have suggested another test at the Punggye-ri nuclear test site could totally destroy it and potentially even cause a mountain to collapse.

Monday's report comes after North Korean leader Kim Jong Un made the announcement on April 20 that his regime would cease its nuclear and long-range missile tests and close the mountainous Punggye-ri nuclear test site, where it has conducted all six of its nuclear tests.

"From April 21, North Korea will stop nuclear tests and launches of intercontinental ballistic missiles," the Korean Central News Agency said, according to the Seoul-based Yonhap News Agency. "The North will shut down a nuclear test site in the country's northern side to prove the vow to suspend nuclear test."

Kim's announcement was met with applause by President Donald Trump, who took to Twitter on Friday and described the move as "Progress being made for all!"

Trump is set to meet with Kim to discuss the rogue state's nuclear program in the near future, though on Sunday he tweeted, "We are a long way from conclusion on North Korea, maybe things will work out, and maybe they won't - only time will tell....But the work I am doing now should have been done a long time ago!" In a separate tweet on Sunday, Trump incorrectly claimed Kim's regime had "agreed to denuclearization" — North Korea has not indicated it will give up its existing nuclear weapons.

North Korea conducted a slew of long-range missile tests last year as part of its larger ambitions to develop a nuclear weapon capable of reaching the mainland US. This generated outrage across the international community and resulted in harsh economic sanctions being leveled against Pyongyang. But the tide began to shift in early 2018 as North and South Korea, historic enemies, renewed dialogue for the first time in roughly two years. This has also led to a cautious warming of relations between Pyongyang and Washington. </s> SEOUL (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said on Saturday that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un told him missile testing would stop when U.S.-South Korea joint exercises ended.

Trump said in a tweet that Kim complained in a letter of the “ridiculous and expensive” exercises and would like to meet and start negotiations as soon as the joint drills were over.
North Korea leader Kim Jong-un announces that North Korea will suspend its missile and nuclear tests and has agreed to shut down its nuclear test sites.