North Korea talks have entered the realm of small victories

The fresh evidence of missile work, for example, comes primarily from imagery gathered by the U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency that “points to ongoing work on at least one Hwasong-15” intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) at a missile factory, according to The Washington Post, which cited anonymous officials “familiar with the intelligence.” But Reuters soon followed up with a suggestion that the signs of such moves might be largely circumstantial. “Photos and infrared imaging indicate vehicles moving in and out of the facility … but do not show how advanced any missile construction might be,” Reuters noted, citing an unnamed “senior U.S. official.” It added that while “one photo showed a truck and covered trailer similar to those the North has used to move its ICBMs,” the cover on the trailer meant “it was not possible to know what, if anything, it was carrying.”

The arms-control expert Jeffrey Lewis, who was quoted in the Post’s article stating that “North Korea is not negotiating to give up their nuclear weapons,” noted in a later podcast that his research team had also tracked through satellite imagery ongoing activity at the factory that was consistent with missile construction. But he also acknowledged that they couldn’t confirm from those open-source images alone that new ICBMs were in fact being built, even if that was the most plausible explanation. A red trailer visible in one photograph might have been used to transport part of a Hwasong-15, he observed. Or “it might just be a fucking shipping container.”

The case for pessimism in response to these reports goes something like this. It’s true that North Korea’s reported activities are “not per se a violation of the Singapore agreement, because we really don’t have an agreement,” said Bruce Klingner, a former top Korea analyst at the CIA who is now at the Heritage Foundation. What came out of the Trump-Kim summit was a “bare-bones … communiqué,” in which the North Korean leader committed to a vague objective of “denuclearization” but not to halt his nuclear and missile production and development, let alone reverse or eliminate it.

Nevertheless, these activities are a “violation of the spirit” of the Singapore statement and also do not “seem to be consistent with a government that’s about to abandon all these programs and production facilities.” Why continue to invest in expanding a nuclear program you’d have to dismantle as part of a nuclear deal? The activities do, however, appear to be consistent with Kim Jong Un’s statement in January about North Korea pivoting from testing missiles and nuclear weapons to mass-producing them.

Of North Korea’s unverified destruction of a nuclear-test site and partial dismantlement of a satellite-launch site in recent weeks, Klingner said, “Perhaps we will look back and say those really were the first of many steps that led us to be convinced” that North Korea was willing to give up its nuclear weapons. At this point, however, they seem, as with North Korea’s recent return of some alleged remains of American soldiers killed during the Korean War, to be “welcome developments but not indicative of denuclearization.”