SEOUL, South Korea: North Korea could carry out a long-range missile test in the next three weeks, with new satellite images showing increased launch site activity, according to satellite operator DigitalGlobe Inc.

The global provider of commercial high-resolution earth imagery said that the new pictures showed significant movement at North Korea’s Sohae (West Sea) Satellite Launch Station.

“Given the observed level of activity noted, of a new tent, trucks, people and numerous portable fuel/oxidizer tanks, should North Korea desire—it could possibly conduct its fifth satellite launch event during the next three weeks,” it said.

DigitalGlobe said that the type of activity was consistent with preparations observed before North Korea’s failed launch of its Unha-3 missile in April.

Pyongyang insisted that the April launch bid was aimed at putting a satellite in orbit, but the United States and United Nations denounced the mission as a disguised ballistic missile test.

The test put a halt to international efforts to engage the isolated nation, with the United States calling off plans to deliver badly needed food assistance.

Any test in the next three weeks would cast a heavy cloud over South Korea’s presidential election on December 19. There have been widespread concerns in Seoul that the North would seek to influence the ballot by conducting a missile launch or provoking a border clash.

The Japanese Asahi Shimbun newspaper had reported last week that the US government had already warned Japan and South Korea that an imminent test was possible.

Last month, the US-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University said that satellite images showed North Korea had conducted motor tests at the Sohae site to improve its long-range missiles.

Some analysts believe that a North Korean rocket, if successfully developed, could eventually reach the range to hit the United States.

North Korea is known to have an inter-continental ballistic missile (ICBM) in development—the Taepodong-2—but it has never been tested successfully.

Days after the failed April test, North Korea raised eyebrows by displaying what appeared to be a new set of ICBMs at a military parade to mark the 100th birthday of the North’s late founder Kim Il-Sung.

But Western military analysts and United Nations sanctions experts concluded that the display models were simply mock-ups.

Japan, N. Korea officials meeting at Beijing
Meanwhile, senior Japanese and North Korean diplomats will meet in Beijing in December following rare talks earlier this month, Tokyo’s top spokesman said on Tuesday.

The talks will be held on December 5 to 6, Chief Cabinet Secretary Osamu Fujimura said.

Top of the agenda is expected to be North Korea’s kidnapping of Japanese nationals in the Cold War era and its arms program, amid media reports that Pyong-yang is preparing for a long-range missile test.

Japan’s top negotiator will be Shinsuke Sugiyama and North Korea will be represented by Song Il-Ho.

They held two-day talks in the Mongolian capital Ulan Bator in mid-November in the first senior-level meeting between the two nations in four years.

After the meeting Sugiyama said the atmosphere was “not acerbic.”

“It was direct, serious and very rich in substance. We discussed a wide range of subjects in depth,” he told reporters at that time.

The countries do not have diplomatic ties and have long been at odds, with Tokyo pressing Pyong-yang to come clean over past abductions of Japanese nationals and its nuclear ambitions.

In 2002 Pyongyang admitted that its agents had kidnapped Japanese nationals in the 1970s and 1980s to train its spies in Japanese language and customs.

North Korea maintains Japan has not made up for its wartime aggression. It demands compensation and atonement.