The discovery of new construction at North Korea's Tongchang-Ri launch site has stunned observers. Last year, North Korea had announced that it would disassemble a rocket engine test stand at the site as a gesture of peace, and satellite imagery showed some progress toward this goal.
At the time, some pundits (correctly) speculated that North Korea was planning some sort of a rebuild, but the actions did briefly provide some degree of hope for successful peace negotiations.
Reports of the new construction appeared in South Korean media and were later confirmed with a series of satellite photos from the US-based think tank 38 North, which has monitored the Tongchang-Ri site for years. The photos show that the site is undergoing a re-vamp in several areas. But why?
This analyst will speculate on why Tongchang-Ri is being redeveloped. North Korea is hoping to expand its role as a spaceport more than as a missile test site.
North Korea's space program has made five satellite launch attempts since 1998. The last three have all taken place from Tongchang-Ri, on North Korea's north-west coast, which now seems to be the only operational spaceport. Another site on North Korea's east coast seems to have been mothballed.
Despite the publicity and the controversy, it should be noted that North Korea's fledgling space program has been modest in its achievements. The greatest propaganda blow it has achieved was beating South Korea in the race to launch a satellite from its own territory.
This happened in December 2012. But North Korea's first satellite failed to operate. Similarly, the second North Korean satellite, launched in 2016, also failed to transmit after reaching orbit.
The Unha-3 rockets used in these recent launches were small by the typical standards of space launch vehicles. Their power was also modest. Unha-3 rockets can only loft fairly small satellites into low orbits.
But North Korea has claimed that it will introduce more powerful satellite launch vehicles in the future. This analyst suggests that the Tongchang-Ri launch site is now being readied to accommodate these new rockets.
One clue is the construction added to a rail-mounted transfer building for rockets, which encloses them as they are carried to the launch pad. 38 North notes that this transfer building is now taller than it was before. That suggests that the building is being prepared to accommodate taller rockets.
In recent times, North Korea has also opened a spiffy new launch control centre at Tongchang-Ri and invited a CNN media delegation to visit the site in 2015. There has been a lot of investment in new infrastructure at this site. This would not be done without plans to use it.
It's difficult to know when the next North Korean satellite launch attempt will be made. But it seems most likely that North Korea's space program will continue.
