Combat readiness: North Korea turns off hotline with South, as both sides prepare for potential of war

 

March 11, 2013 – SEOUL – North Korea has cut off a Red Cross hotline with South Korea, as it escalates its war of words against Seoul and Washington in response to a military drill in the South and UN sanctions imposed for its recent nuclear test. The North had threatened to cut off the hotline on March 11 if the United States and South Korea did not abandon their joint military exercise. The Red Cross hotline is used to communicate between Seoul and Pyongyang which do not have diplomatic relations. “We called at 9am and there was no response,” a government official from South Korea said. The line is tested each day. Pyongyang has also threatened to cut off a hotline with UN forces in South Korea, at the border “truce village” of Pammunjom. Tensions on the Korean peninsula have risen since the North conducted a third nuclear test on Feb. 12, prompting new UN sanctions. South Korea and UN forces are conducting large-scale military drills until the end of April, while the North is also gearing up for a massive state-wide military exercise. North Korea has accused the United States of using the military drills in South Korea as a launch pad for a nuclear war and has threatened to scrap the armistice with Washington that ended hostilities in the 1950-53 Korean War. The North has threatened a nuclear strike on the United States, but such a threat has been dismissed as rhetoric by analysts, as the North does not have the military capacity to reach the United States. The North is viewed as more likely to stage some kind of attack along a disputed sea border, if it does anything at all, rather than risk a war with South Korea and the United States, which it would lose, according to most military assessments. –Times of India

Tensions mounting: Over the past week, newspapers here in the South have turned Pyongyang’s threats into front-page spreads: its promises of “pre-emptive nuclear strikes,” “all-out war” and withdrawal from the 60-year-old Armistice Agreement that ended the Korean War the BBC reports. The secretive communist state is due to begin its own large-scale military drills this week. Few people here are expecting full-blown war, but in the current climate, there is concern over accidental escalation, especially after North Korea’s decision to cut the military hot-line between the two sides at Panmunjom. Even this though is not unprecedented. The telephone line at Panmunjom has been abandoned by the North before, most recently in 2010. The year before that, it also announced its withdrawal from all joint agreements involving the South. And analysts point out that an alternative military communications line, used to monitor cross-border workers at the Kaesong Industrial Complex, remains open. “I’m not so worried,” another Korean friend told me. “Even though they have cut the hotline, I see their rhetoric as a plea for direct negotiations with the US.” –BBC

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