At the beginning of the year, the leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-un, gave orders to classify South Korea as the “main enemy” and to destroy the monument to the reunification of the Korean Peninsula that existed in Pyongyang. Then came the hundreds of garbage balloons that filled the skies north of Seoul, in response to the South Korean propaganda balloons that are frequently launched into North Korean territory. The last episode in the destruction of ties between the two countries was the effective destruction of the roads that connected them.
This Tuesday, around noon local time, the North Koreans blew up the roads of Gyeongui and Donghae and, supposedly, the train lines that connected the country to the South – and which had not been used for years. South Korean soldiers responded with fire below the demarcation line. Seoul’s Reunification Ministry called the incident “highly abnormal,” saying it violated previous agreements and deplored Pyongyang’s “regressive behavior.”
Tension between the two countries, technically still at war as the 1950-53 conflict ended with an armistice rather than a peace treaty, increased after North Korea last week accused the South of launching drones with propaganda to fly over your capital. It was also, according to the Korean People’s Army, a “self-defense measure to inhibit war”, speaking in response to military exercises by South Korea and the frequent presence of North American nuclear submarines in the region.
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