A South Korean agent communicates with a North agent in the border village of Panmunjom, January 3, 2018. – / AP / SIPA
The North Korea intends Tuesday to cut its communication channels, including military, with the “enemy” South Korean, the North Korean state agency KCNA announced after activists threatened to send anti-Pyongyang leaflets to the communist country.
Pyongyang “will completely cut the link between the authorities of the North and the South”, as well as other channels of communication notably between the armed forces of the two states or between the political parties in power in Seoul and Pyongyang, detailed KCNA. This interruption is scheduled for 12 noon local Tuesday (5 a.m. French time), she added.
Threats to make Seoul suffer
The threat comes at a time when relations between the two neighbors are deadlocked despite three summits in 2018 between North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in. North Korea threatened last week to close the liaison office with South Korea and to take additional measures to make Seoul “suffer”.
Kim Yo-jong, influential sister of Kim Jong-unalso threatened to nullify the military agreement between the two countries unless Seoul prevents activists from sending anti-Pyongyang leaflets. This agreement was signed in September 2018 during Moon Jae-in’s visit to Pyongyang. It is intended to ease tensions at their common border, but its provisions have not really been implemented at this stage.
North Korean dissidents and other activists have a long-standing habit of dropping balloons laden with leaflets to the north denouncing the Communist regime’s human rights record and its nuclear ambitions.
“They just fueled our dismay”
KCNA said the South Korean authorities were colluding with “the hostile actions” against North Korea, “which resulted in the collapse of inter-Korean relations.” “We came to the conclusion that there was no need to sit face to face with the South Korean authorities and that there was no point in arguing with them because they did not that fuel our dismay, “writes the agency.
North Korea has ended most of its contacts with the South after the failure of the summit between Kim Jong-un and US President Donald Trump in February 2019 in Hanoi (Vietnam), which left the negotiations on the North Korean nuclear power stationary. It was their second summit, after that of Singapore in June 2018.
Pyongyang, which has nuclear weapons, has been the target of numerous sanctions over the years by the United Nations Security Council for its banned weapons programs. Liaison office operations have already been suspended due to the new coronavirus pandemic. And Pyongyang has carried out several weapon tests in recent months.
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