North Korea says military to re-enter cooperation sites
SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea said Wednesday it will redeploy troops to now-shuttered inter-Korean tourism and economic sites near the border with South Korea and take other steps to nullify landmark 2018 tension-reduction deals.
The steps came a day after the North Korea blew up an inter-Korean liaison office just north of the Korean border in a carefully choreographed, largely symbolic display of anger that puts pressure on Washington and Seoul amid deadlocked nuclear diplomacy.
The demolition was the most provocative act by North Korea since it entered nuclear talks in 2018, though the building was empty and the North previously had signaled plans to destroy it.
The North’s General Staff said units of the regiment level and necessary firepower sub-units will be deployed at the sites of the Diamond tourism project and the Kaesong industrial complex, both just north of the heavily-fortified border.
Those sites, once symbols of inter-Korean cooperation, have been shuttered for years amid animosities over North Korea’s nuclear program.
The North said it also will resume military exercises and re-establish guard posts in border areas and open front-line sites for flying propaganda balloons toward South Korea. These steps means that North Korea will nullify a 2018 deal with South Korea aimed at lowering military tensions at border areas.
Under those agreements, the two Koreas halted live-firing exercises, removed some land mines, and destroyed guard posts inside their border, the world’s most heavily fortified. Some outside experts said such steps have undermined South Korea’s national security more as the North’s nuclear weapons arsenal remain intact.
South Korea’s government didn’t have immediate response to the North Korean military statement.
The North’s official Korean Central News Agency on Wednesday repeated the hard-line stance against South Korea it has taken to retaliate for South Korea’s failure to prevent activists from floating propaganda leaflets across the border.
The building destruction was a “reflection of the zeal of our enraged people to punish human scum who challenged the noblest dignity and prestige of our country and those who sheltered the scum, perpetrators of shuddering crime.”
It said the destruction is the first step of the North’s retaliatory action against South Korea and the North will set the intensity and timing for its additional steps while closely monitoring South Korean moves.
Kim Yo Jong, the sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, issued a separate statement saying North Korea had rebuffed a recent offer by South Korean President Moon Jae-in to send special envoys to Pyongyang to defuse animosities.
She said Moon had offered to dispatch his National Security Director Chung Eui-yong and spy chief Suh Hun at the earliest possible date that North Korea would want.
Kim Yo Jong, has spearheaded the North’s recent fiery rhetoric against South Korea, called Moon’s offer “unrealistic” and “nonsensical.”