BEIJING (AFP) - Foreign diplomats taken to the area of a reported mystery explosion in North Korea were shown a large building site and told two blasts occurred but as part of construction of a hydro-electric power project.
Their trip came as South Korea indicated that the reports concerning the huge explosion were the result of a misreading by intelligence officers of satellite and seismological data made available in Seoul.
Suspicions were aroused that a nuclear test could have taken place after South Korean media said last week a massive mushroom cloud was kicked up in an area known to contain storage sites for missiles and explosives.
To prove this was not the case, North Korea took a group of foreign diplomats to what it said was the site of explosions in rugged Kimhyungjik county Thursday.
"They went to a huge building site," said a German diplomat in Pyongyang, who was briefed by German ambassador to North Korea Doris Hertramps who visited the area.
"North Korea explained that there had been two large explosions, one on Wednesday and one on Thursday last week," he told AFP, adding that they spent 90 minutes in the area.
Pyongyang said they were controlled explosions to remove a mountain in preparation for construction of a hydro-electric power project.
The diplomat confirmed they had been shown a hydro-electric plant but was unable to confirm evidence of explosions.
"It`s very hard to tell," he said.
"The ambassador is not a technical expert so we need experts to examine what we have been told and what we have seen."
The area they were taken to -- where North Korea has previously said it was building a vast dam project -- was some 60 kilometres (37 miles) east of the site initially identified by South Korean intelligence authorities.
South Korean Vice Unification Minister Lee Bong-Jo Friday admitted they now suspected there was no blast at all at that original site.
Rather, it was more likely an earth tremor.
As for the reported mushroom-shaped clouds, he said they could be explained away as natural phenomena.
"We suspect there was no blast at all at the site where intelligence authorities originally thought there were indications of a blast," he told reporters in Seoul.
"Considering various factors, including weather and geographic peculiarities in the region, we now judge that there is a high possibility that the clouds in the shape of mushrooms might be natural clouds," he said.
In London, Britain`s minister for East Asia Bill Rammell said British ambassador David Slinn and the other diplomats at the construction site were allowed to take photographs and the evidence would be carefully analysed.
"The information they gathered will be reported back to technical experts in capitals. We now need to await their findings," he said.
Rammell was in Pyongyang last week when news of the explosions first surfaced and he was the driving force behind setting up the site visit.
"We welcome the speed in which the North Koreans set up the visit following my request to the foreign minister on Monday," he said.
The United States, which is locked in a near two-year standoff with North Korea over its nuclear weapons drive, has said it was awaiting a readout on the findings.
The group of diplomats consisted of officials from the missions of Britain, Germany, Poland, Russia, Sweden, the Czech Republic, India and Mongolia.