North Korea rejects South’s offer of envoys, vows to redeploy troops to border

Seoul, June 17

North Korea on Wednesday rejected South Korea’s supply to ship particular envoys to ease escalating tensions over defector exercise and stalled reconciliation efforts and vowed to redeploy troops to frame areas.

The bulletins made by state media company KCNA got here a day after North Korea blew up a joint liaison workplace arrange in a border city as a part of a 2018 peace settlement between the 2 international locations’ leaders.

Any strikes to invalidate cross-border peace offers pose a significant setback to South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in’s efforts to foster extra lasting reconciliation with the North.

They may additionally complicate efforts by U.S. President Donald Trump, already grappling with the coronavirus pandemic and anti-racism protests, to steer Pyongyang to desert its nuclear and missile programmes.

On Monday, Moon supplied to ship his nationwide safety adviser Chung Eui-yong and spy chief Suh Hoon as particular envoys, KCNA mentioned. But Kim Yo Jong, the sister of North Korean chief Kim Jong Un and a senior ruling occasion official, “flatly rejected the tactless and sinister proposal”.

“The solution to the present crisis between the North and the South caused by the incompetence and irresponsibility of the South Korean authorities is impossible and it can be terminated only when proper price is paid,” KCNA mentioned.

North Korea’s Rodong Sinmun, the ruling Workers’ Party’s official newspaper, printed pictures exhibiting the liaison workplace earlier than and after its demolition, alongside a sequence of KCNA articles and commentaries criticising South Korea.

“Ominous prelude to total catastrophe of North-South relations,” one of many articles was headlined, referring to the workplace’s destruction.

MOON CRITICISED

Kim Yo Jong additionally harshly criticised Moon in one other KCNA assertion, saying he had didn’t implement any of the 2018 pacts and “put his neck into the noose of pro-U.S. flunkeyism”.

South Korea’s presidential Blue House mentioned the criticism of Moon was impolite and mindless, and broken the belief constructed by the leaders of the 2 Koreas.

“We will no longer accept such unreasonable behaviour,” Blue House spokesman Yoon Do-han mentioned at a briefing, with out elaborating.

Moon supplied to play a mediator position between Trump and Kim Jong Un as they pulled again from buying and selling threats and insults in 2017, resulting in a sequence of conferences in 2018 and 2019 that had been excessive on symbolism however which didn’t obtain a breakthrough on denuclearisation.

In Monday’s speech, which marked the 20th anniversary of the primary inter-Korean summit, Moon expressed remorse that North Korea-U.S. and inter-Korean relations haven’t made progress as hoped however requested Pyongyang to keep up peace offers and return to dialogue.

“In the eyes of the Kims, Moon’s administration gave too much of false hope that it would defy U.S. pressure to move their relations forward,” mentioned Chun Yung-woo, a former South Korean nuclear envoy.

“But after two years, what they have left is a failed summit with Trump and no progress whatsoever on inter-Korean economic cooperation.”

RE-ARMING BORDER

In a separate KCNA dispatch on Wednesday, a spokesman for the General Staff of the (North) Korean People’s Army (KPA) mentioned it might dispatch troops to Mount Kumgang and Kaesong close to the border, the place the 2 Koreas had carried out joint financial initiatives previously.

The KPA spokesman additionally mentioned police posts that had been withdrawn from the closely fortified Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) might be reinstalled, whereas artillery models close to the western sea border, the place defectors steadily ship propaganda leaflets, might be bolstered.

The North may also restart sending anti-Seoul leaflets throughout the border, he added.

Seoul’s defence ministry has urged North Korea to abide by a 2018 inter-Korean army pact, underneath which either side vowed to stop “all hostile acts” and dismantled a variety of constructions alongside the DMZ.

Jang Kum Chol, director of North Korea’s United Front Department answerable for cross-border affairs, mentioned the North won’t ever have talks or exchanges sooner or later with South Korean authorities “who evoke only disgust and nasty feelings”.

“It is our stand that we had better regard everything that happened between the North and the South as an empty dream,” he mentioned, in line with KCNA. — Reuters