US urges North Korea to avoid further ‘counterproductive’ steps

The United States on Tuesday urged North Korea to keep away from additional “counterproductive” steps after it blew up a liaison workplace on the border with the South.

“The United States fully supports the ROK’s efforts on inter-Korean relations and urges the DPRK to refrain from further counterproductive actions,” a State Department spokesperson stated, referring to the South and North by their official names.

North Korea blew up an inter-Korean liaison workplace on its aspect of the border on Tuesday, triggering broad worldwide condemnation after days of virulent rhetoric from Pyongyang.

The demolition got here after Kim Yo Jong — the highly effective sister of North Korean chief Kim Jong Un — stated on the weekend the “useless north-south joint liaison office” would quickly be seen “completely collapsed”.

Footage of the explosion launched by Seoul’s presidential Blue House confirmed a blast rolling throughout a number of buildings simply throughout the border in Kaesong, with a close-by tower partially collapsing as clouds of smoke rose into the sky.

Analysts say Pyongyang could also be looking for to fabricate a disaster to extend strain on Seoul whereas nuclear negotiations with Washington are at a standstill.

After an emergency assembly, the National Security Council stated it will “react strongly” if Pyongyang “continues to take steps that aggravate the situation”.

“All responsibility for repercussions stemming from this action falls squarely on the North,” it added.

The US, European Union and Russia all known as for restraint.

The EU warned Pyongyang towards taking additional “provocative and damaging steps”.

The liaison workplace — in a dormant industrial zone the place Southern firms as soon as employed Northern staff — was opened in September 2018, days earlier than the South’s President Moon Jae-in flew to Pyongyang for his third summit with Kim.

Around 20 officers from all sides have been stationed on the workplace throughout subsequent months.

But inter-Korean relations soured following the collapse of the Hanoi summit between Kim and US President Donald Trump in February final 12 months over sanctions aid and what the North could be keen to surrender in return.

Operations on the workplace have been suspended in January due to the coronavirus pandemic.

And since early June, North Korea has issued a sequence of vitriolic condemnations of the South over activists sending anti-Pyongyang leaflets over the border — one thing defectors do regularly.

Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency stated Tuesday the liaison workplace’s destruction was in step with “the mindset of the enraged people to surely force human scum and those who have sheltered the scum to pay dearly for their crimes”.

Last week Pyongyang introduced it was severing all official communication hyperlinks with Seoul.

“North Korea has started a provocation cycle with stages of escalation,” stated Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul, calling the destruction of the workplace “a symbolic blow to inter-Korean reconciliation and cooperation”.

“The Kim regime is also signalling the United States won’t have the luxury of keeping North Korea on the back-burner for the remainder of the year,” he added.

– Relations soured –

Since Pyongyang condemned the leaflet launches — often hooked up to scorching air balloons or floated in bottles — the Unification ministry has filed a police criticism towards two defector teams and warned of a “thorough crackdown” towards activists.

On Monday, the left-leaning Moon urged the North to not “close the window of dialogue”.

The two Koreas stay technically at warfare after Korean War hostilities ended with an armistice in 1953 that was by no means changed with a peace treaty.

Last week the North criticised Trump in a stinging denunciation of the US on the second anniversary of the Singapore summit, with its international minister Ri Son Gwon accusing Washington of looking for regime change.

US diplomats insist that they imagine Kim promised in Singapore to surrender his nuclear arsenal, one thing Pyongyang has taken no steps to do.

The North is underneath a number of worldwide sanctions over its banned weapons programmes.

It believes it deserves to be rewarded for its moratorium on nuclear and intercontinental ballistic missile assessments and the disabling of its atomic test website, together with the return of jailed US residents and stays of troopers killed within the Korean War.

“Nothing is more hypocritical than an empty promise,” Ri stated in his assertion, carried by the official KCNA information company.

Cheong Seong-chang, director of the Sejong Institute’s Center for North Korean Studies, stated: “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.

“It has concluded the South has failed as a mediator in the process.”