Earlier on Tuesday, the North Korean military said it was “fully prepared” to take action against the south.
Seoul:
North Korea detonated an inter-Korean liaison office on its side of the border on Tuesday, said the South Unification Ministry after days of increasingly virulent rhetoric from Pyongyang.
“North Korea detonates the Kaesong liaison office at 2:49 pm,” said the ministry, which is responsible for inter-Korean relations, in an online alert sent to journalists.
The statement came minutes after an explosion was heard and smoke rose from the long shuttered common industrial area in Kaesong, where the liaison office was set up less than two years ago, reported the Yonhap news agency citing unspecified sources.
Its destruction came after Kim Yo Jong, the powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, said this weekend: “Before long, a tragic scene from the completely collapsed unnecessary North-South Liaison Office would be seen. “
Analysts say Pyongyang could seek to create a crisis to increase pressure on Seoul while nuclear talks with Washington are stalled.
Since the beginning of June, North Korea has issued a series of South Vitriol sentences for activists who send anti-Pyongyang leaflets over the border – something defectors do regularly.
Last week, he announced that he was severing all official communications links with South Korea.
The leaflets – usually attached to hot air balloons or floated in bottles – criticize North Korean leader Kim Jong Un for his human rights abuses and his nuclear ambitions.
“North Korea is frustrated that the South has not proposed an alternative plan to revive the North American talks, let alone create an atmosphere conducive to recovery,” said Cheong Seong-chang, director of the Center for North Korea from the Sejong Institute for North Korea. Studies.
“He concluded that the South had failed as a mediator in the process.”
The liaison office was opened in September 2018, a few days before President of the South, Moon Jae-in, traveled to Pyongyang for his third summit with Kim.
Sour relationships
Officials from both sides were posted to the office over the next few months, but inter-Korean relations deteriorated after the collapse of the Hanoi summit between Kim and US President Donald Trump in February last year.
Its operations were suspended in January due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Since Pyongyang condemned the launch of the flyer, the Seoul Unification Ministry has filed a lawsuit against two groups of defectors and warned of “deep repression” against the activists.
On Monday, the moon on the left urged the North not to “close the dialog window”.
Earlier on Tuesday, the North Korean military said it was “fully prepared” to take action against the south, including by returning to areas that had been demilitarized under an inter-Korean agreement.
The two Koreas remain technically at war after the end of hostilities in the Korean War with an armistice in 1953 which was never replaced by a peace treaty.
(With the exception of the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
