SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea (news - web sites)'s latest assessment of a widely reported explosion in North Korea (news - web sites) last week is that there was no blast at all at the suspected site, a vice minister said on Friday.
Seismic signals and strange cloud formations picked up last week were not from an explosion, vice minister of unification, Rhee Bong-jo, told reporters.
A security analyst said a week of speculation and confusion over reports of a blast was likely the result of what amounted to an intelligence failure. Initial reports even suggested a nuclear test could have been carried out.
International talks have been held on North Korea's nuclear programs but they have made little progress.
Foreign diplomats who visited on Thursday what they were told was the site of the mysterious explosion said it was a hydroelectric project under construction. But South Korea said they had been taken to the wrong place.
South Korea said the diplomats had been about 100 km (60 miles) away from the suspected location in remote Kimhyungjik county on the Chinese border. But the story became even more convoluted when Rhee said there had been no blast at all.
"There is no information to support an explosion in the area where there were indications of an explosion," Rhee said.
"It is likely the peculiar cloud was natural cloud," Rhee said, referring to initial reports of a mushroom cloud. He said seismic activity had probably been from around Mount Paektu, on the Chinese border, even further from Kimhyungjik county.
Yun Duk-min of South Korea's Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security said a failure of intelligence and the suspicion with which secretive North Korea is viewed contributed to the confusion.
"This appears to have been an intelligence failure as we looked into a very closed society," Yun told Reuters.
"The heightened level of alert in the way the international community looks at North Korea likely bred this incident," he said. "It looks like we fell into a trap."
North Korea says the explosion was demolition work for a power plant. Rhee said that was probably a reference to work in Samsu county, where the diplomats went.
Western diplomats said the group had been flown and taken by road to a large construction site in Samsu on Thursday.
German Ambassador to North Korea Doris Hertrampf said from Pyongyang that the group of diplomats had been told blasts on Sept. 8 and 9 were larger than usual to speed up work on a dam.
"I saw there was a huge hole in the ground, and a huge amount of earth moving going on. I'd guess it must have been a blast," she said by telephone.
