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See the secretive nuclear facility North Korea destroyed just hours before Trump canceled his upcoming Kim Jong Un meeting

See the secretive nuclear facility North Korea destroyed just hours before Trump canceled his upcoming Kim Jong Un meeting

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Here's an overview of the main portion of the site. The primary offices and administrative buildings are in the center of this image.

Trump sought North Korea's full denuclearization prior to the planned meeting, though he ratcheted down that demand in recent days.

In a show of self-described "transparency," North Korea invited foreign journalists to witness the demolition of the testing site.

Source: Sky News

"There was a huge explosion, you could feel it. Dust came at you, the heat came at you. It was extremely loud," Sky News journalist Tom Cheshire, who was at the scene, said of the demolition.

Source: Sky News

But the destruction of Punggye-ri may have been just for show. "What does it actually mean in the long term? Probably not that much, unfortunately," Melissa Hanham, a nuclear expert at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, told NPR.

By making a huge spectacle of destroying the facility, North Korea could show the US it was serious about denuclearization. However, according to Hanham, the Punggye-ri isn't a critical piece of North Korea's nuclear infrastructure.

North Korea has been testing weapons at the site for over a decade, and it's not clear that the regime needs to continue using the site to test weapons.

Source: NPR

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