SEOUL: North Korea blew up a liaison office with the South in the border city of Kaesong on Tuesday (Jun 16), Seoul's Unification ministry said, after days of increasingly virulent rhetoric from Pyongyang.
"North Korea blows up Kaesong Liaison Office at 14:49," the office of the spokesman for 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.
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The liaison office was launched in September 2018 as part of a series of projects aimed at reducing tensions between the two Koreas.
When it was operating, dozens of officials from both sides would work in the building, with South Koreans travelling each week into the North.
The office has been closed since January over coronavirus fears.
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."
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.
Defector-led groups have also been sending food, US$1 bills, many radios and USB sticks containing South Korean dramas and news over the border.
South Korea took legal action against two such groups, saying they fuel cross-border tensions, pose risks to residents living near the border and cause environmental damage.
But the groups say they intend to push ahead with their planned campaign this week.
The North said in a statement earlier on Tuesday that it is ready to take action over propaganda leaflets.
The General Staff of the Korean People's Army (KPA) said it has been studying an "action plan" to re-enter zones that had been demilitarised under an inter-Korean pact and "turn the front line into a fortress".
Seoul's defence ministry called for Pyongyang to abide by the 2018 agreement, in which both sides' militaries vowed to cease "all hostile acts" and dismantled a number of structures along the heavily fortified Demilitarized Zone between the two countries.
"We're taking the situation seriously," ministry spokeswoman Choi Hyun-soo told a briefing. "Our military is maintaining readiness posture to be able to respond to any situation."
Analysts say Pyongyang may be seeking to manufacture a crisis to increase pressure on Seoul while nuclear negotiations with Washington are at a standstill.
"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."
https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMiaWh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmNoYW5uZWxuZXdzYXNpYS5jb20vbmV3cy9hc2lhL25vcnRoLWtvcmVhLWJsb3dzLXVwLWxpYXNvbi1vZmZpY2Uta2Flc29uZy1zb3V0aC1rb3JlYS0xMjg0MDAwMNIBAA?oc=5
2020-06-16 07:15:50Z
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