North Korea blows up inter-Korean liaison office near border with South
SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea blew up an inter-Korean liaison office on its side of the border on Tuesday, the South's Unification ministry said, after days of increasingly virulent rhetoric from Pyongyang.
"North Korea blows up Kaesong Liaison Office at 14:49," the ministry, which handles inter-Korean relations, said in a one-line alert sent to reporters.
The statement came minutes after an explosion was heard and smoke seen rising from the long-shuttered joint industrial zone in Kaesong where the liaison office was set up less than two years ago, Yonhap news agency reported citing unspecified sources.
Its destruction came after Kim Yo Jong, the powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, said at the weekend: "Before long, a tragic scene of the useless north-south joint liaison office completely collapsed would be seen."
Analysts say Pyongyang may be seeking to manufacture a crisis to increase pressure on Seoul while nuclear negotiations with Washington are at a standstill.
Since early June, North Korea has issued a series of vitriolic condemnations of the South over activists sending anti-Pyongyang leaflets over the border — something defectors do on a regular basis.
Last week it announced it was severing all official communication links with South Korea.
The leaflets — usually attached to hot air balloons or floated in bottles -—criticise North Korean leader Kim Jong Un for human rights abuses and his nuclear ambitions.
"North Korea is frustrated that the South has failed to offer an alternative plan to revive the US-North talks, let alone create a right atmosphere for the revival," said Cheong Seong-chang, a director of the Sejong Institute's Center for North Korean Studies.
"It has concluded the South has failed as a mediator in the process."
The liaison office was opened in September 2018, days before the South's President Moon Jae-in flew to Pyongyang for his third summit with Kim.
Relations soured
Officials from both sides were stationed at the office during subsequent months, but inter-Korean relations soured following the collapse of the Hanoi summit between Kim and US President Donald Trump in February last year.
Its operations were suspended in January because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Since Pyongyang condemned the leaflet launches, Seoul's unification ministry has filed a police complaint against two defector groups and warned of a "thorough crackdown" against activists.
On Monday, the left-leaning Moon urged the North not to "close the window of dialogue".
Earlier Tuesday, North Korea's army said it was "fully ready" to take action against the South, including re-entering areas that had been demilitarised under an inter-Korean agreement.
The two Koreas remain technically at war after Korean War hostilities 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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