North Korea dismantles nuclear test site

SEOUL: North Korea said it had “completely” dismantled its nuclear test site Thursday in a carefully choreographed move portrayed by the isolated regime as a goodwill gesture.

Invited foreign journalists at the scene described a series of explosions throughout the day, three of them in entry tunnels to the underground facility, followed by blasts that demolished a nearby barracks and other structures at the Punggye-ri test site in the country’s northeast.

“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 who was among those invited to attend the ceremony, wrote on the British broadcaster’s website. In a statement North Korea‘s nuclear weapons agency said the site had been dismantled “completely... to ensure transparency of the discontinuance of nuclear test(ing).”