Pyongyang Pledges to Halt Nuclear and Longer-range Missile Tests

Japan Times - North Korea announced Saturday that it had suspended nuclear and longer-range missile tests and shut down its main nuclear test site as the sanctions-hit country seeks to shift its focus to shoring up its moribund economy, state media said, less than a week ahead of a key inter-Korean summit.

Leader Kim Jong Un called the completion of its nuclear weapons program a "great victory," and said that "no nuclear test and intermediate-range and inter-continental ballistic rocket test-fire are necessary for the DPRK now."

"The mission of the northern nuclear test ground has thus come to an end," he added at a gathering of the Central Committee of the ruling Workers' Party, according to the official Korean Central News Agency.

The party decided at the meeting that nuclear tests and ICBM launches will cease as of Saturday — the last long-range missile test was in November — and that the North's main Punggye-ri nuclear test site will be "dismantled to transparently guarantee" the end of testing, the report said. North Korea has conducted all of its six nuclear tests at the Punggye-ri site in the country's northeast since 2006.

Within minutes of the report's issuance, U.S. President Donald Trump, who is due to hold a planned summit with Kim by June to discuss the "denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula," tweeted: "This is very good news for North Korea and the World- big progress! Look forward to our Summit."

Speaking to reporters, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was less sanguine.

"I want to welcome these positive moves, but I wonder if this will lead to the complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement of its nuclear arsenal, weapons of mass destruction and missiles," Abe said. "I'd like to keep a close eye on the...