North Korea to cut communication lines to 'enemy' South: KCNA
SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea will cut military and political communication links to "enemy" South Korea on Tuesday, state media said, after 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.
Last week, the North threatened to close the liaison office with the South and warned of 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.
North Korean defectors, which she calls "human scum," and other activists have long flown balloons across the border carrying leaflets that criticise Kim over human rights abuses and his nuclear ambitions.
'Betrayers and riff-raff'
KCNA said South Korean authorities connived with "the hostile acts against the DPRK by the riff-raff," referring to the North by its official acronym.
"This has driven the inter-Korean relations into a catastrophe," it said.
"We have reached a conclusion that there is no need to sit face-to-face with the south Korean authorities and there is no issue to discuss with them, as they have only aroused our dismay," KCNA said.
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," the state news agency added.
They decided "to make the betrayers and riff-raff pay for their crimes, and then, to begin with, gave an instruction to completely cut off all the communication and liaison lines".
The military pact which Kim Yo Jong has threatened to scrap was signed during Moon's visit to Pyongyang in 2018 aimed at easing border tensions. But most of the deals have not been acted on.
Pyongyang largely severed 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 nuclear-armed and impoverished North is subject to multiple UN Security Council sanctions over its banned weapons programmes.
Operations at the liaison office have already been suspended because of the novel coronavirus pandemic, and Pyongyang has carried out a series of weapons tests in recent months -- often describing them as multiple launch rocket systems, although Japan and the US have called them ballistic missiles.
The two sides remain technically at war, since fighting in the Korean War ended with an armistice in 1953 that was never replaced with a peace treaty.
South Korean officials were briefing the White House Thursday on the outcome of their pathfinding meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
Seoul has already publicized that North Korea offered talks with the United States on denuclearization and normalizing ties, a potential diplomatic opening after a year of escalating tensions over the North's nuclear and missile tests. The rival Koreas also agreed to hold a leadership summit in late April.
Top Trump administration officials were getting a chance to hear firsthand from South Korean national security director, Chung Eui-yong, who led the delegation that went to Pyongyang. — Associated Press
South Korea's defense ministry says Thursday it was "closely monitoring" a North Korean nuclear reactor site after local media reported its operations had been temporarily suspended, potentially to extract weapons-grade plutonium.
The Donga Ilbo newspaper reports earlier in the day that intelligence sources in Seoul and Washington had detected signs the five-megawatt reactor in Yongbyon had temporarily stopped operations late last month.
The suspension could be an indication that spent fuel rods are being reprocessed to extract plutonium for use in nuclear weapons, the report cited a government source as saying. — AFP
State media reports that North Korea's rubber-stamp legislature has enshrined the country's status as a nuclear weapons power in the constitution.
"The DPRK's nuclear force-building policy has been made permanent as the basic law of the state, which no one is allowed to flout with anything," leader Kim Jong Un said at a meeting of the State People's Assembly that was held Tuesday and Wednesday, the KCNA news agency says.
DPRK is the acronym for the country's formal name. — AFP
State news agency KCNA reports that North Korea announced it had built a "tactical nuclear attack submarine" as part of its effort to strengthen its naval force.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un presided over the unveiling ceremony on Wednesday, saying the new sub was part of a "push forward with the nuclear weaponization of the Navy in the future", according to KCNA.
The launching of submarine No. 841, named the Hero Kim Kun Ok, "heralded the beginning of a new chapter for bolstering up the naval force of the DPRK", the KCNA report said, referring to the country by the abbreviation of its formal name. — AFP
State-controlled media reports Sunday that North Korea staged a "simulated tactical nuclear attack" drill at the weekend with mock atomic warheads attached to two long-range cruise missiles that were test-fired into the ocean.
The Korean Central News Agency says the operation early Saturday was a "counteraction drill" in response to joint military activity by US and South Korean forces that KCNA said has escalated tensions in the region.
"A firing drill for simulated tactical nuclear attack was conducted at dawn of September 2 to warn the enemies of the actual nuclear war danger," KCNA reports. — AFP
Seoul's military says North Korea fired multiple cruise missiles off its west coast on Saturday, the latest in a string of recent Pyongyang military actions.
The launches come three days after the North launched a pair of short-range ballistic missiles as part of a "tactical nuclear strike drill" prompted by the annual US-South Korean Ulchi Freedom Shield military exercises, which always infuriate the reclusive regime.
Pyongyang views such the drills as a rehearsal for invasion while the two allies say they are defensive in nature. — AFP
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