North Korea Blows Up Liaison Office Shared With South Korea After Kim Jong Un's Sister Threatened Military Action
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Smoke rose from the Kaesong industrial area, thought to have been the result of the North's explosion of an inter-Korean liaison office. Photo: NK News. |
Yonhap said there was black
smoke and a loud bang in the inter-Korean industrial park in Kaesong on June 16
when Pyongyang destroyed its liaison office with South Korea.
Responding to Yonhap ,
the Unification Ministry of South Korea confirmed on June
16 that North Korea had exploded an inter-Korean liaison
office.
Citing several military
sources, Yonhap said there was black smoke and a loud bang from the
Kaesong town area in North Korea, near the inter-Korean border, at
noon. This is the place where the inter-Korean industrial park has the
same name and the liaison office between the two peninsulas.
On the morning of the same
day, Rodong Sinmun of North Korea threatened "that
the useless thing called the North-South joint liaison office will disappear
without a trace".
Pyongyang announces that
the next steps in retaliation will be implemented by the North Korean People's
Army General Staff (KPA).
The North Korean People's
Army's headquarters on the same day said it was studying "measures to
return the military to demilitarized areas under an agreement between the two
regions, turning the front line into a fortress and raising the scene."
military sentiment towards Korea ”.
North Korea had earlier
warned it would close its inter-Korean liaison office in Kaesong. Kim Yo
Jong, the younger sister of leader Kim Jong Un and currently the
first deputy head of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea,
announced that the Korean military is planning to take the next retaliation
step for the " hostile activities "of Korea.
A South Korean police car
in Paju province on June 12 prevented political activists from dropping
leaflets on the inter-Korean border. Photo: Yonhap.
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Over the weekend, Kim Yo
Jong warned the building in Kaesong would soon "collapse". In a
June 15 article in the Rodong Sinmun newspaper, a North Korean Labor Party
mouthpiece, Pyongyang called South Korea the "enemy" right on the
occasion of the 20th anniversary of the first inter-Korean summit in history.
The newspaper also quoted
local openers that they were willing to join hands "to blow up" the inter-Korean
liaison office.
According to NK News ,
South Korea spent nearly 8.6 million USD to renovate
inter-Korean liaison office. There are currently no Korean personnel
working at the building. The facility has been temporarily closed since
January due to concerns about Covid-19 infection.
The office opened in 2018,
after the inter-Korean summit.
Tensions on the peninsula
escalated after a group of North Koreans defected their balloons to spread
anti-destruction leaflets on the inter-Korean border. Pyongyang has
accused Seoul of turning a blind eye to recurring hostilities at the border and
retaliated by cutting all communications between the two regions.
Keasong Industrial Park is
a special economic zone managed by Korea and North Korea. According to Sputnik,
the industrial park has about 124 South Korean companies operating with more
than 54,000 Korean workers.
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