NK blows up liaison office with South

NORTH Korea blew up an inter-Korean liaison office on its side of the border on Tuesday, said the South’s Ministry of Unification, 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 located, 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.”

North Korea has issued a series of vitriolic condemnations of the South over activists sending anti-Pyongyang leaflets over the border – something defectors regularly do.

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 the North Korean leader for human rights abuses and his nuclear ambitions.

Analysts say Pyongyang may be seeking to manufacture a crisis to increase pressure on Seoul while nuclear negotiations with Washington are at a standstill.

On 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.

Cheong Seong-chang, a director of the Sejong Institute’s Centre for North Korean Studies said: “North Korea has concluded the South has failed as a mediator [in the US-North talks].”