North Korea announces it will cut military and political communication links to its neighbor South Korea
North Korea announced on Tuesday (local time) that it will cut military and political communication links to “enemy” South Korea, AFP reported, citing state media.
The move follows repeated threats over activists sending anti-Pyongyang leaflets over the border.
The threats come with inter-Korean ties at a standstill, despite three summits between the North’s Kim Jong Un and the South’s President Moon Jae-in in 2018.
Pyongyang “will completely cut off and shut down the liaison line between the authorities of the North and the South, which has been maintained through the North-South joint liaison office,” as well as other communication links “from 12:00 on June 9, 2020,” the Korean Central News Agency said.
The links being cut also include “the East and West Seas communication lines” between militaries of the two sides, an inter-Korean “trial communication line” and a hotline between the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea and South Korea’s presidential Blue House, KCNA said.
The North threatened last week to close the liaison office with the South and threatened further steps to make Seoul “suffer.”
Kim’s powerful sister, Kim Yo Jong, also threatened to scrap a military agreement signed with Seoul unless the South stopped activists from sending the leaflets.
KCNA said that Kim Yo Jong, and another top official, Kim Yong Chol, have “stressed that the work towards the South should thoroughly turn into the one against enemy.”
Pyongyang largely cut off contact with Seoul following the collapse of a summit between Kim and US President Donald Trump in Hanoi last year that left nuclear talks at a standstill.
The pair had met three times since June 2018 but made little progress towards denuclearization.
Since those talks broke down, North Korea has conducted several tests of ballistic missiles.
Pyongyang set a unilateral end-2019 deadline for Washington to offer fresh concessions. In his New Year’s message after his ultimatum to the US expired, the North Korean leader said his country would continue developing nuclear programs unless the US gave up “its hostile approach”.
(Arutz 7 – Israel National News).