North Korean Nuclear Site Tunnel Collapses At Punggye-ri, About 200 Feared Dead

As many as 200 people could have been killed when a North Korean tunnel under construction at the country’s nuclear test site collapsed, according to a Japanese news report Tuesday.

When the tunnel at North Korea’s Punggye-ri nuclear test site collapsed, about 100 people were thought to be trapped inside. A second collapse then occurred further trapping another 100 people involved in rescuing the people initially trapped, Japan's TV Asahi reported.

According to Yonhap News Agency, the time of the accident was not provided by the report.

Experts have speculated the test site may have become unstable following six nuclear tests, the most powerful of which was last month.

Nam Jae-cheol, the chief of South Korea's weather agency Korea Meteorological Administration, said Monday during a parliamentary meeting another blast could cause the mountainous test site to collapse, leading to a leak in radioactive materials.

According to the Independent, the mountain visibly shifted during last month’s test which recorded a 6.3 magnitude earthquake. The area not known for natural seismic activity has experienced three more earthquakes since.

“What we are seeing from North Korea looks like some kind of stress in the ground,” said Paul Richards, a seismologist at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. “In that part of the world, there were stresses in the ground but the explosions have shaken them up.”

The 7,200-foot-high Mount Mantap is now thought to be suffering from “tired mountain syndrome.”

According to an Express report, China issued a warning to Kim Jong-un with regards to the state of the nuclear site. A cloud of nuclear fallout could spread across “an entire hemisphere” if the facility collapsed, they warned.

“China cannot sit and wait until the site implodes,” the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Geology and Geophysics said. "Our instruments can detect nuclear fallout when it arrives, but it will be too late by then. There will be public panic and anger at the government for not taking action.”

This comes amid reports of mass evacuation drills in preparation for possible war in North Korea.