South Korea’s Unification Ministry said on Wednesday (April 27) that a North Korean nuclear test appeared imminent as the North’s ruling Workers’ Party plans to hold a congress from May 6, the first such conference in 36 years.
North Korea’s drive to develop nuclear capabilities has intensified since January, when it conducted its fourth nuclear test and followed that with a string of tests of missiles that could deliver such a weapon.
Old rival South Korea, and others nervously watching the North’s defiance of U.N. resolutions aimed at curbing its nuclear and ballistic missile technologies, expect another test within days.
“Considering the state of readiness at the nuclear test site, it’s our view that a nuclear test can happen at any time,” South Korean Unification Ministry spokesman Jeong Joon-hee told a briefing.
South Korea’s military said this week Kim’s go-ahead was all that was needed for a new test, with the North saying it needed a “powerful nuclear deterrence” to counter U.S. hostility and threats.
Jeong added North Korea’s Worker’s Party Congress was set to go ahead.
“North Korea announced that it will hold the party congress in early May so it would be held as planned. And we expect it to last four or five days,” Jeong added.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is expected to use the congress to cement his leadership and to formally adopt his policy, known as “byongjin”, to push simultaneously for economic development and nuclear weapons capability.
North Korea’s last party congress was in 1980, before Kim was born. Kim, the third member of his family to lead the country, is believed to be 33.
Byongjin follows Kim’s father’s Songun, or “military first”, policy and his grandfather’s Juche, the North’s home-grown founding ideology that combines Marxism and extreme nationalism.
The party congress, first announced in October, will be closely watched for any new policies and for how the country will present its pursuit of nuclear weapon capability.
Reuters