The U.S. denounced North Korea for its “long history of bellicose rhetoric” after the totalitarian state said a state of war exists with neighboring South Korea, and threatened to close a joint industrial zone.
“We take these threats seriously and remain in close contact with our South Korean allies,” White House spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said in an e-mailed statement on March 30. “But we would also note that North Korea has a long history of bellicose rhetoric and threats” and the latest statement “follows that familiar pattern.”
North Korea threatened March 30 to shut a jointly run industrial zone in its border city of Gaeseong in response to flights over the south by U.S. stealth bombers. Tensions have risen since North Korea detonated a nuclear device in February, defying global sanctions.
“It seems there are no more cards left for North to pressure South now, and Gaeseong seems to be the last resort,” Yang Moo Jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul, said by phone yesterday. “Chances of them closing it are very slim, almost impossible.”
About 200,000 North Koreans, including workers and their families, depend on the Gaeseong industrial zone for income, Yang said.
North Korea, with an economy of about $29 billion according to the latest estimate by the South’s central bank, generates about $100 million profit annually from the joint project, Yang said. The South’s economy, some 38 times larger, makes quadruple that amount, according to Yang.
KCNA via KNS / The Associated Press fileNorth Korean leader Kim Jong Un, center, walks with military personnel as he arrives for a military unit on Mu Islet, located in the southernmost part of the southwestern sector of North Korea's border with South Korea.
Warship Sinking
Tensions last rose to this level between the two sides in 2010, following the sinking of the South Korean warship Cheonan, which killed 46 sailors, and North Korea’s shelling eight months later of a South Korean border island, in which four people died.
“Every issue raised between the North and South will be dealt with in a war-time manner,” the state-run Korean Central News Agency said March 30, citing what it called a special statement. U.S. stealth bomber flights over South Korea this week are “unacceptable” and North Korea’s statement is a “final warning” to the U.S. and its allies, KCNA said.
The North Korean news agency said in a statement yesterday that “nuclear armed forces represent the nation’s life which can never be abandoned as long as the imperialists and nuclear threats exist on earth.”
HONG JIN-HWAN/AFP/Getty ImagesA giant floating crane lifts the stern of a South Korean warship to place it on a barge on April 15, 2010. The 1,200-tonne patrol combat corvette PCC-772 Cheonan was split in two by a big external explosion on March 26 near a disputed Yellow Sea border, with the loss of 46 lives.
Hot Line Cut
Kim Jong Un’s regime last month cut off a military hot line with South Korea, put artillery forces on high alert and threatened pre-emptive nuclear strikes, drawing condemnation from U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel.
“It’s part of what I call March Madness on the Korean Peninsula,” said Kenneth Quinones, professor of Korean studies at Akita International University in Japan. “Every March when the U.S. and South Korea hold military maneuvers, North Korea goes on full alert and makes similar threats. The only difference is the rhetoric has intensified, and the situation certainly merits concern and close monitoring.”
North Korea may “ban the south side’s personnel’s entry into the zone and close it,” an unidentified spokesman for the General Bureau for Central Guidance to the Development of the Special Zone said March 30 in a statement carried by KCNA.
National Post
No comments:
Post a Comment