Seoul responded with an unusually harsh sentence, calling the remarks “senseless” and “very rude.”
Seoul, South Korea:
North Korea threatened on Wednesday to step up its military presence in and near the demilitarized zone, one day after it detonated its southern liaison office, drawing harsh criticism from Seoul.
In a series of denunciations by South Korea, the nuclear-armed North rejected President Moon Jae-in’s offer to send envoys for talks.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s powerful sister Kim Yo Jong called it a “tactless and sinister proposition,” the official KCNA news agency reported.
Seoul responded with an unusually harsh sentence, calling the remarks “senseless” and “very rude.”
“We warn that we will no longer tolerate the unreasonable acts and words of the North,” said Blue House spokesperson Yoon Do-han, calling Pyongyang’s disclosure of the offer from Moon envoys “d ‘an unprecedented insane “.
And his defense ministry said threats from the north would violate several inter-Korean agreements. “The North will surely pay the price if such measures are taken,” he said in a statement.
The demolition of the liaison office in the Kaesong industrial zone, just across the border in northern territory, came after Pyongyang vehemently condemned Seoul for anti-Pyongyang leaflets sent by defectors to the north. .
Office activities had already been suspended for months due to the coronavirus pandemic.
And relations between neighbors have stalled since the collapse of a summit last year between the nuclear-armed North and the United States in Hanoi on sanctions relief and what Pyongyang would be ready to give up in return.
Rising tensions
Analysts say the North could now seek to fabricate a crisis to increase pressure on the South to root out concessions.
In a statement issued by the official KCNA news agency, a spokesman for the Northern Army said it would deploy regiment-level units in the tourist area of Mount Kumgang and the Kaesong complex.
The two zones are sites of common inter-Korean projects with long shutters: tourists from the South visited the picturesque mount Kumgang until a North Korean soldier killed in 2008 a woman who went away from the path.
At the Kaesong complex – where the liaison office was located until Tuesday – South Korean companies employed North Korean workers, paying Pyongyang for their work under a lucrative arrangement for the authorities.
The military spokesman for the North also said that the guard posts that had been removed from the demilitarized zone under a 2018 inter-Korean agreement would be restored to “strengthen the guard on the front line”.
Military exercises in the border area would resume, he added, and they would prepare to send leaflets to the south.
Since early June, North Korea has issued a series of South Vitriol sentences on leaflets, which defectors send regularly, usually tied to balloons or floated in bottles.
The leaflets criticize North Korean leader Kim Jong Un for his human rights abuses and his nuclear ambitions.
Moon, who has long supported engagement with the nuclear-armed North, has been called unrealistic by his critics for his accommodating approach.
The two Koreas remain technically at war after the end of hostilities in the Korean War with an armistice in 1953 but not a peace treaty.
(With the exception of the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
