A top South Korean official said Monday he misspoke earlier in the day when he told lawmakers there is an "indication" that North Korea is preparing for a nuclear test. But that doesn't change what Seoul has been saying for months: that Pyongyang has already prepared a tunnel for a nuclear blast and can use it whenever it wants. 
 
 A South Korean man uses his mobile phone in front of empty lockers which are used for worker's belongings before leaving for the North Korean city of Kaesong, at the customs, immigration and quarantine... (Associated Press) 
 
 An unidentified elementary school teacher, center, orders her students to leave as they watch South Korean housewives stage a press conference denouncing the annual joint military exercise known as Foal... (Associated Press) 
 
 South Koreans wait for a chance to enter the North Korean city of Kaesong at the customs, immigration and quarantine office near the border village of Panmunjom, which has separated the two Koreas since... (Associated Press) 
 
 A man walks at the customs, immigration and quarantine office near the border village of Panmunjom, which has separated the two Koreas since the Korean War, in Paju, north of Seoul, South Korea, Monday,... (Associated Press) 
 
 South Koreans read newspapers reporting on North Korea's threat of war on a street in Seoul, South Korea, Monday, April 8, 2013. South Korea’s top security official said Sunday that North Korea may be... (Associated Press) 
 
 South Korean army soldiers patrol along a barbed-wire fence near the border village of Panmunjom in Paju, South Korea, Monday, April 8, 2013. South Korea’s top security official said Sunday that North... (Associated Press) 
 
 When a lawmaker asked whether there was an indication of increased personnel and vehicles at the North's nuclear test site, Unification Minister Ryoo Kihl-jae said "there is such an indication." He said he couldn't say more because it involved confidential intelligence. 
 
 The comments in a parliamentary session were recorded on video, but Ryoo later told lawmakers he couldn't remember making them and didn't mean to say them. He said he was "startled" by reports carrying his earlier comments. 
 
 A Unification Ministry official said that Ryoo had intended to say that North Korea has long been ready to conduct a nuclear test. She spoke on condition of anonymity because she wasn't authorized to speak publicly about the matter. 
 
 After Ryoo's initial comments, South Korean Defense Ministry spokesman Kim Min-seok said there are vehicle and personnel activities at the northeastern test site but they are seen as "usual" activities, not an "indication for a nuclear test." Kim said North Korea can conduct a nuclear test anytime if decides to do so. 
 
 South Korea has said the North prepared two tunnels for a nuclear test, but used only one Feb. 12. 
 
 The confusion over a possible nuclear test came a day after another top South Korean official said a North Korean missile test may be in the works around Wednesday. 
 
 Either a nuclear test or a missile test would escalate tensions that have been rising for weeks on the Korean Peninsula, and would likely invite a new round of U.N. Security Council sanctions over North Korea's nuclear and rocket activity. The U.S. and South Korea have been raising their defense posture, and foreign diplomats were considering a warning from Pyongyang that their safety in North Korea could not be guaranteed beginning Wednesday. 
 
 After Ryoo's initial comment, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged North Korea on Monday not to carry out a new nuclear test, saying it would be a "provocative" act amid soaring tensions. 
 
 "I have repeatedly expressed my great concern about the continued inflammatory rhetoric from Pyongyang," Ban told reporters in the Netherlands after meeting Dutch Foreign Minister Frans Timmermans. "Making any threat relating to nuclear weapons is not a game." 
 
 North Korea has unleashed a flurry of war threats and provocations over U.N. sanctions for its last nuclear test, and over ongoing U.S.-South Korean military drills, which the allies say are routine but Pyongyang says is a preparation for a northward invasion. 
 
 Last week, North Korea warned nations with embassies in Pyongyang that it would not be able to guarantee the safety of their staffs as of Wednesday. 
 
 The warning prompted South Korean President Park Geun-hye's national security director to say that Pyongyang may be planning a missile launch or another provocation around Wednesday, according to presidential spokeswoman Kim Haing. 
 
 During a meeting with other South Korean officials, the official, Kim Jang-Soo, also said the notice to diplomats and other recent North Korean actions are an attempt to stoke security concerns and to force South Korea and the U.S. to offer a dialogue. Washington and Seoul want North Korea to resume the six-party nuclear talks _ which also include China, Russia and Japan _ that it abandoned in 2009. 
 
 The roughly two dozen countries with embassies in Pyongyang appeared to be staying put, for now at least. 
 
 Sweden, which looks after U.S. interests in North Korea because Washington and North Korea lack diplomatic relations, and Brazil have no plans to withdraw any diplomats from Pyongyang at this stage, according to their foreign ministries Sunday. Brazil said it is keeping a close eye on the situation but at this time see no reason to change the decision. There has been no advisory that staff at the Egyptian Embassy will leave or suspend their work. 
 
 The Pentagon has strengthened missile defenses and made other decisions to combat the potential threat, and postponed a missile test, scheduled for this week in California, to avoid raising tensions further. U.S. Gen. Martin Dempsey, the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, said Sunday that he doesn't believe North Korea will engage in military action soon, "but I can't take the chance that it won't." 
 
 Dempsey said the U.S. has been preparing for further provocations or action, "considering the risk that they may choose to do something" on one of two nationally important anniversaries _ April 15, the birth of North Korean founder Kim Il Sung, and April 25, the creation of the North Korean army. 
 
 Tensions between Seoul and Pyongyang led South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff to announce Sunday that its chairman had put off a visit to Washington. The U.S. military said its top commander in South Korea had also canceled a trip to Washington. 
 
 The South Korean defense minister said Thursday that North Korea had moved a missile with "considerable range" to its east coast, possibly to conduct a test launch. His description suggests that the missile could be the Musudan missile, capable of striking American bases in Guam with its estimated range of up to 4,000 kilometers (2,490 miles). 
 
 Amid North Korea's threats and warnings, it has blocked South Korean workers and cargo from entering its Kaesong industrial complex, where South Korean companies have employed thousands of North Korean workers for the past decade. 
 
 North Korea is not forcing South Korean managers to leave the factory complex, and about 500 of them remained at Kaesong on Monday. But the entry ban at the park, the last remaining inter-Korean rapprochement project, is posing a serious challenge to many of the more than 120 South Korean firms there because they are running out of raw materials and are short on replacement workers. More than a dozen of the companies have stopped their operations in Kaesong. 
 
 A high-level North Korean official visited the industrial zone on Monday, the official Korean Central News Agency reported. It said that Kim Yang Gon, secretary of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea, blamed South Korea for making it impossible to operate to zone as usual. 
 
 South Korea's finance minister, Hyun Oh-seok, said Monday that it is "quite ridiculous" for North Korea to be closing the border at Kaesong. "North Korea has nothing to gain from this kind of things," he said at a news briefing. 
 
 Hyun said the government is looking at ways to help Kaesong firms. 
 
 Chinese President Xi Jinping said Sunday _ without specifically mentioning North Korea _ that no one country should be allowed to upset world peace. 
 
 "The international community should advocate the vision of comprehensive security and cooperative security, so as to turn the global village into a big stage for common development rather than an arena where gladiators fight each other. And no one should be allowed to throw the region, or even the whole world, into chaos for selfish gains," Xi said Sunday at the Boao Forum for Asia, a China-sponsored talk shop for the global elite. He said China would work to reduce tensions over regional hotspots. 
 
 Seoul and Washington are taking the threats seriously, though they say they have seen no signs that Pyongyang is preparing for a large-scale attack. 
 
 Kim Jang-soo, the national security director, said the North would face "severalfold damages" for any hostilities. Since 2010, when attacks Seoul blames on North Korea killed 50 people, South Korea has vowed to aggressively respond to any future attack. 
 
 In recent weeks, the U.S. has followed provocations from North Korea with shows of force connected to the joint exercises with South Korea. It has sent nuclear capable B-2 and B-52 bombers and stealth F-22 fighters to participate in the drills. 
 
 In addition, the U.S. said last week that two of the Navy's missile-defense ships were moved closer to the Korean Peninsula, and a land-based missile-defense system is being deployed to the Pacific territory of Guam later this month. The Pentagon last month announced longer-term plans to strengthen its U.S.-based missile defenses. 
 
 North Korea successfully shot a satellite into space in December and conducted its third nuclear test in February. It has threatened to launch a nuclear attack on the United States, though many analysts say the North hasn't achieved the technology to manufacture a miniaturized nuclear warhead that could fit on a long-range missile capable of hitting the U.S. 
 
 ___ 
 
 AP writers Youkyung Lee in Seoul, Mike Corder in The Hague, Lolita C. Baldor in Washington, Robert Burns in Bagram, Afghanistan and Charles Hutzler in Boao, China, contributed to this report. ||||| North Korea remains years away from being able to launch ballistic missiles from a submarine even as its leader Kim Jong Un seeks to expand the fleet’s range and firepower, weapons analysts said. 
 
 “If the North decides to pursue such a capability, it is likely to take years to design, develop, manufacture, and deploy an operational submarine-launched ballistic missile force,” Joseph S. Bermudez Jr., chief analytical officer at AllSource Analysis, wrote last week on 38 North, a blog run by the U.S.- Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington. 
 
 A North Korean submarine with working missile silos would mark a giant stride in Kim’s ability to threaten distant rivals, including the U.S., as his regime claims it can now make warheads small enough to be deployed on missiles. 
 
 The U.S. and South Korea remain vigilant on North Korean submarines among an array of threats the country poses, Kwon Ki Hyun, a spokesman for Seoul’s Defense Ministry, said today by phone. He declined to confirm a Yonhap News report yesterday that the North modified a Soviet-era diesel submarine to build its own vessel that could eventually be capable of firing ballistic missiles. Yonhap cited an unidentified South Korean government official. 
 
 Nuclear Tests 
 
 North Korea, which has conducted three nuclear tests since 2006, has been trying to modify Soviet-era submarines so they can be used to launch SSN6 missiles, South Korean Defense Ministry spokesman Kim Min Seok said in September. He said then that the North hadn’t yet succeeded in making its subs capable of firing missiles. 
 
 “The North Koreans are poor, but not stupid, and they do have some pretty good engineers, especially in weapons areas,” Dean Cheng, who specializes in military capabilities as a research fellow at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, said in an e-mail. “But modifying a submarine is no mean feat, and would take a lot of time and be risky, especially as it would require compromising the hull’s integrity and would likely make a fairly noisy boat even noisier.” 
 
 North Korea has built a test pad in its eastern coastal city of Sinpo that is “probably intended to explore the possibility of launching ballistic missiles from submarines or of a shipboard vertical launch ballistic missile capability,” Bermudez wrote, citing commercial DigitalGlobe images from July. 
 
 Warship Torpedoed 
 
 North Korea has 1.2 million troops and operates about 70 submarines, while the South has 10 of the vessels, according to a 2012 South Korean defense white paper. South Korea accused the North of torpedoing one of its warships in 2010, resulting in the deaths of 46 sailors, a charge the North denies. 
 
 In June, North Korea released photos of Kim boarding a submarine during drills. He has also stepped up efforts to expand his regime’s missile arsenal, personally overseeing the launch of “ultra-precision” guided missiles in June. North Korea is banned from developing ballistic missiles under sanctions imposed by the United Nations for nuclear testing. 
 
 Putting ballistic missiles on submarines may also limit Kim’s ability to control the weapons, Bermudez said. 
 
 “It also assumes that Pyongyang would entrust an operational nuclear-armed missile to the captain of a submarine who would, in time of war, most likely be out of communication with the leadership,” he said. 
 
 Atomic Bombs 
 
 North Korea may have made “considerable” progress in miniaturizing its atomic bombs, South Korean Defense Minister Han Min Koo said today at a parliamentary hearing. Army General Curtis Scaparrotti, the commander of U.S. forces in Korea, said last month that the North may now be able to miniaturize a nuclear weapon to fit on a mobile missile warhead that could hit parts of the U.S. 
 
 While Kim hasn’t yet deployed a ballistic missile that could hit the mainland U.S., “he’s showing us the signs that he’s trying to get there,” Admiral Samuel Locklear, head of U.S. forces in the Pacific, said in a Bloomberg Government interview in September. 
 
 To contact the reporters on this story: Sam Kim in Seoul at skim609@bloomberg.net; David Tweed in Hong Kong at dtweed@bloomberg.net 
 
 To contact the editors responsible for this story: Rosalind Mathieson at rmathieson3@bloomberg.net Andrew Davis, Neil Western
– Top government officials from the Koreas met over the weekend in the border town of Panmunjom to discuss keeping the peace, Reuters reports. But North Korea seems to be hedging its bets after a South Korean military official said that 50 of its northern foe's submarines have disappeared, the Yonhap news agency reports. "Seventy percent of North Korea's submarines left their bases, and their locations are not confirmed," an official told reporters yesterday, adding, per Chosun Ilbo, "Scores of subs that have left their bases on the eastern and western coasts are off our radar, which is an unprecedentedly serious situation." The main concern is that the subs could cross the Northern Limit Line (the maritime line in the sand between the two countries) or take on South Korean Navy vessels in surprise attacks from the rear, the paper notes. It adds that although North Korean submarines—described by the National Post as" largely outdated and technically obsolescent versions produced in the 1960s for the Soviet Union"—make a lot of noise (meaning they should be easy to find), there are so many missing it would be hard to keep track of them all. Also worrisome, per the military official: North Korea has apparently doubled its number of artillery troops along the DMZ since Friday, per Chosun Ilbo. "They seem ready to shoot," the official says. (Pyongyang declaring a "quasi-state of war" doesn't sound good.)