South Korean Marines patrol on Yeonpyeong Island, South Korea. Photos / AP
North Korea said today that it will redeploy troops to now-closed 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 had previously signalled plans to destroy it.
NK’s recent actions and stmts are worrisome. Many have rightly pointed out how Kim is trying to manufacture tension & so far doing it in a nonlethal, but dramatic way. They’ve also said how we’ve seen this kind of behavior from NK b4.
— Jung H. Pak, PhD (@junghpak1) June 16, 2020
Let me explain what this says about Kim. 1/
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 located just north of the heavily-fortified border.
Those sites, once symbols of inter-Korean cooperation, have been shut for years amid animosities over North Korea's nuclear programme.
The North said it will also 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.
There have been days of threats against the South over anti-Pyongyang leaflets being sent by defectors into its territory.
Smoke was seen rising above the border city of Kaesong, the Yonhap News Agency said.
Kim Yo Jong, the increasingly powerful sister of Kim Jong Un, the North Korean leader, said at the weekend: "Before long, a tragic scene of the useless North-South joint liaison office completely collapsed would be seen."
North Korea confirmed the explosion on state media, stating that the office was targeted "corresponding to the mindset of the enraged people to surely force human scum and those who have sheltered the scum to pay dearly for their crimes," reported Reuters.
Why North Korea just blew up its de facto embassy with South Korea https://t.co/fXcHA5fGPu
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) June 16, 2020
Since early June, North Korea has criticised Seoul over defector groups sending anti-Pyongyang messages and supplies over the border.
To placate the North and get stalled peace talks back on track, South Korean authorities stepped up border controls to block activists and took legal action against defector groups for sending messages into the North via balloons and other means.
But their efforts - which were condemned by human rights groups as sacrificing freedom of speech at the behest of an authoritarian regime - appear to have been in vain.
Hours before destroying the office, the North warned that its army was ready to go into action against the South, and may "advance into demilitarised zones".
"Our army is keeping a close watch on the current situation in which North-South relations are turning worse and worse," the general staff of the Korean People's Army said in a statement reported by Yonhap.
Clearly, #NorthKorea wants to punish & threaten #SouthKorea for siding with US on sanctions. But there's a domestic agenda, too: This is also a bid by Pyongyang to shift blame for economic hardship onto #SouthKorea instead of taking responsibility for KJU's policies.
— Jean H. Lee (@newsjean) June 16, 2020
Analysts believe the scale of the North's vitriolic threats suggest that the activities of defector groups are not the main point of contention, but that Pyongyang is acting on its simmering anger over the collapse of denuclearisation talks with the United States.
Negotiations over the dismantling of North Korea's nuclear and weapons programme in exchange for the lifting of international economic sanctions against the regime have not recovered since Kim and Donald Trump abruptly ended a failed 2019 summit in Vietnam.
Edward Howell, a North Korea specialist at the University of Oxford, said that destroying the liaison office "followed through on one of Kim Yo Jong's threats issued a few days ago". He added: "Kim Yo Jong ambiguously said the next step would be a military manoeuvre."
- additional reporting AP