SEOUL: South Korean officials said Thursday that there have been continual movements of personnel and vehicles at North Korea's main nuclear test site, but ruled out the possibility that the country is preparing its third atomic bomb test anytime soon. The assessment came shortly after the mass-circulation Chosun Ilbo newspaper reported Thursday that Pyongyang may be preparing another nuclear test, citing “brisk” activities at its atomic test site in the northeastern county of Kilju. The paper, citing an unidentified South Korean government source, said a US spy satellite detected such activities and that North Korea could detonate a nuclear device in three months. The North may have intentionally let those activities be detected by the US and South Korean authorities to force them to soften hardline policies and to wrest concessions and aid, the paper said. The communist country may also be preparing a bomb test to bolster its military capability amid moves to transfer power from leader Kim Jong Il to his third and youngest son, Kim Jong Un, it said. South Korean officials, however, denied that the North was preparing a nuclear test soon, saying personnel and vehicle movements have been continuously detected for more than a year at the site, where the North conducted two bomb tests in recent years. “No concrete evidence that North Korea is preparing a third nuclear test has been found,” presidential spokeswoman Kim Hee-jung told reporters, according to her office.
