North Korean Leader Kim Jong-un has overruled plans to increase military pressure on South Korea, after weeks of escalating tensions on the peninsula. Supreme Leader Kim has suspended measures which were thought to include the resumption of exercises at the border, along with the redeployment of troops along the demilitarized zone (DMZ). These purported actions were said to be in retaliation for the South’s inability to effectively curb activities of propaganda spreading activists and defectors.
Also read: Inter-Korean Tensions Escalate, North Korea Says It Will Redeploy Troops to Border
Friction between the two Koreas has come to a head over defector activity in recent weeks, stalling any reconciliation efforts. Last week, after cutting all communication lines with Seoul, North Korea bombed a joint liaison office in the border town of Kaesong and threatened to deploy troops near the heavily armed border. Additionally, Kim Yo-jong, the supreme leader’s sister and his senior advisor, issued an ominous military threat against the “enemy” South, saying it was “high time” to break relations between the two countries.
Also read: Kim Yo-jong, Sister and Key Advisor to Kim Jong-un, Issues Military Threat to South Korea
State news outlet Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported that Kim took the decision at a meeting of Seventh Central Military Commission of the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK), where participants studied “some documents carrying the state measures for further bolstering the war deterrent of the country”, and “took stock of the prevailing situation” between North and South Korea. The agency provided no further details. North Korean troops were also seen removing about 10 loudspeakers from near the DMZ, which they had installed last week.
Also read: North Korea Severs All Communication Channels With “Enemy” South
Though relations between the two nations appeared to be on the mend in 2018, links between them have rapidly deteriorated since Kim Jong-un’s talks with US President Donald Trump collapsed last year with no agreement regarding denuclearization or the easing of UN sanctions on the country. Since then, North Korea has increased pressure on the South to work on improving inter-Korean economic ties even before the North dismantles its nuclear weapons program. However, when South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s government placed denuclearization as a precondition for restarting ventures between the two nations, the North turned increasingly harsh towards the South.
Experts claim that North Korea’s recent actions are likely a part of a broader plan to ask for more concessions from its neighbor. North Korean isolation has increased due to the coronavirus crisis, and rising economic pressure and crippling international sanctions are taking their toll on the country and its leadership. This could be just a way for Kim Jong-un to distract the population from North Korea’s woes and rally the people around a common cause.
A spokesman of South Korea’s Unification Ministry has said that Seoul was “closely reviewing” the situation. Tomorrow will be 70 years since the start of the Korean war. North and South Korea still technically remain at war, given that the fighting, which ended in 1953, did so with an armistice rather than a peace treaty.
Image Source: Reuters UK