By Bernama
Seoul : North Korea Thursday said it will suspend all dialogue with South Korea and close the inter-Korean border to South Korean officials in retaliation for what it called Seoul’s hostility, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency quoted officials as saying here.
The latest threat came in a telephone message addressed to Seoul’s chief delegate to inter-Korean military talks, Maj. Gen. Kwon Oh-sung, in response to Seoul’s call made Wednesday for Pyongyang to halt its hostile rhetoric and actions.
The measures, if taken, would mark a significant escalation of actions by the communist North, following its recent verbal attacks on the South’s new conservative government of Lee Myung-bak — which marked the first such direct offensive against a South Korean president in eight years.
In a two-sentence reply to Kwon’s message, the North’s chief delegate to inter-Korean military talks, Lt. Gen. Kim Yong-chol, said his country will soon start taking the steps, according to a spokesman for the Defence Ministry.
“The North Korean side in a reply delivered today said it will soon start taking the steps it laid out in an earlier message delivered on March 29,” the ministry spokesman, Kim Hyong-ki, told reporters.
The North later confirmed its rejection of Seoul’s gesture, also suggesting its punitive measures are already in place.
“The South’s authorities will never be free of their sole responsibilities in causing the halt of North-South dialogue and suspension of passage (through the border),” Yonhap cited the North’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) report from Pyongyang.
The March 29 message, according to an earlier report by KCNA, stated Pyongyang would also counter any attempt by South Korea to launch preemptive strikes against the North with “more rapid and more powerful preemptive attacks of its own.”
Kwon’s message to his North Korean counterpart itself was a reply to the threat. North Korea claims the new chairman of South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) has called for launching a preemptive strike against the North’s nuclear facilities.
Seoul on Wednesday said the North’s accusation is based on what it called an intentional misinterpretation of the remarks by the JCS head, Gen. Kim Tae-young, at a National Assembly confirmation hearing, and that it sincerely abides by the non-aggression agreement between the two Koreas.
The North Korean general rejected Seoul’s explanation Thursday, calling it an “excuse.”
“The message is very short. It consists of two sentences. One says it is only an excuse, which we believe is an answer to our message sent yesterday. The other sentence says they will start taking the military actions,” the ministry spokesman said.
Kim said the government had no plans to reply to the North’s latest message because it would only be a repeat of what it has already said.
“The government believes we have already explained our position to the North side to the fullest extent and there are no additional steps it must take on the same issue,” he said.
Ministry officials said the North was unlikely to take any other steps other than those stated in the March 29 message, but some observers noted the communist nation could resort to other provocative measures, such as test-firing missiles or infiltrating South Korea’s territorial waters in the West Sea, should tensions continue to escalate.
North Korea fired three short-range missiles last Friday in the West Sea, the site of two deadly naval clashes between the two Koreas in 1999 and 2002 that led to heavy casualties on both sides.