North Korea threatens to re-enter demilitarized border areas amid latest tensions
SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea threatened Tuesday to re-enter border areas that had been demilitarized under a recent agreement with the South, raising tensions amid anger over the distribution of propaganda leaflets by anti-regime activists.
The communist state has stepped up its bellicose rhetoric despite promises by South Korea to stop the leafleting, a longtime practice that has taken on new significance as Seoul tries to improve inter-Korean relations.
The North Korean army said it was “keeping a close watch on the current situation in which the north-south relations are turning worse and worse” and “will rapidly and thoroughly implement any decisions and orders” of the ruling Workers’ Party and government.
The army’s general staff is “studying an action plan” to “advance again into the zones that had been demilitarized under the north-south agreement, turn the front line into a fortress and further heighten the military vigilance against the south,” according to the state-run Korean Central News Agency.
The statement came two days after the influential sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un threatened to demolish a liaison office in the border area of Kaesong.
Kim Yo Jong also branded South Korea an “enemy” and said she had given the general staff the right to take the “next action.”
KCNA didn’t offer more specifics, but South Korean media speculated the North may be referring to regions where it has pulled out troops to facilitate past economic and tourism projects around the border town of Kaesong and the Mount Kumgang resort area.
The two Koreas also vacated several guard posts in the Demilitarized Zone that divides the peninsula as part of a military agreement reached in 2018 during a bout of diplomatic efforts to improve relations that have since fizzled.
North Korea has made several threats in recent months in an apparent bid to increase pressure on the South to move forward with stalled bilateral economic projects and to take its side in demands for the United States to ease sanctions in nuclear talks.
Experts also have said the North may be trying to project strength on the domestic front to shore up support amid the coronavirus crisis.
“This is #NorthKorea seeking to manufacture tension,” Jean Lee, a Korea expert at the Washington, D.C.-based Wilson Center, said in a tweet, adding that Pyongyang “is trying to corner Seoul into breaking with the US-led sanctions campaign."
KCNA said the military also said it was looking at “opening many areas” in frontline spots on the ground and in the sea off the peninsula’s western coast and to cooperate with “people from all walks of life” against what it called an expected large-scale “leaflet scattering struggle.”
gamel.kim@stripes.com
Twitter: @kimgamel
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June 16, 2020 at 06:41AM
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