North Korea cuts off last communication with South: ‘a simmering nuclear war is now underway’

 

March 28, 2013 – NORTH KOREA – Reclusive North Korea is to cut the last channel of communications with the South because war could break out at “any moment,” it said on Wednesday, days of after warning the United States and South Korea of nuclear attack. The move is the latest in a series of bellicose threats from North Korea in response to new U.N. sanctions imposed after its third nuclear test in February and to “hostile” military drills under way joining the United States and South Korea. The North has already stopped responding to calls on the hotline to the U.S. military that supervises the heavily armed Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) and the Red Cross line that has been used by the governments of both sides. “Under the situation where a war may break out at any moment, there is no need to keep north-south military communications which were laid between the militaries of both sides,” the North’s KCNA news agency quoted a military spokesman as saying. “There do not exist any dialogue channel and communications means between the DPRK and the U.S. and between the north and the south.” The Pentagon condemned the latest escalation in North Korean rhetoric, with spokesman George Little calling Pyongyang’s declaration “yet another provocative and unconstructive step.” The U.S. military announced on March 15 it was bolstering missile defenses in response to threats from the North, including a threat to conduct a preemptive nuclear strike against the United States. Despite the shrill rhetoric, few believe North Korea, formally known as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), will risk starting a full-out war. North and South Korea are still technically at war anyway after their 1950-53 civil conflict ended with an armistice, not a treaty, which the North says it has since torn to pieces. The “dialogue channel” is used on a daily basis to process South Koreans who work in the Kaesong industrial project where 123 South Korean firms employ more than 50,000 North Koreans to make household goods. About 120 South Koreans are stationed at Kaesong at any one time on average. It is the last remaining joint project in operation between the two Koreas after South Korea cut off most aid and trade in response to Pyongyang’s shooting of a South Korean tourist and the sinking of a South Korean naval vessel blamed on the North. Kaesong is one of North Korea’s few hard currency earners, producing $2 billion a year in trade with the South, and Pyongyang is unlikely to close it except as a last resort. –Yahoo News

Stealth bombers sent overnight to S. Korea: The American military made a rare announcement that two nuclear-capable B-2 stealth bombers ran a practice bombing sortie over South Korea on Thursday, underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend its ally amid rising tensions with North Korea. The two B-2 Spirit bombers made a nonstop round trip from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, demonstrating the United States’ ability to “provide extended deterrence to our allies in the Asia-Pacific region” and to “conduct long-range, precision strikes quickly and at will,” the American command in the South Korean capital, Seoul, said in a statement. It was the first time the American military publicly confirmed a B-2 mission over the Korean Peninsula. As the bombers dropped inert munitions that they carried 6,500 miles over the Pacific to an island bombing range off South Korea’s west coast, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel conferred with his South Korean counterpart, Kim Kwan-jin, on the phone, reaffirming the United States’ “unwavering” commitment to defend the South. Both B-52 and B-2 can launch nuclear-armed cruise missiles. The Pentagon used their training sorties over the Korean Peninsula to highlight the role the long-distance strategic bombers play, as part of Washington’s “nuclear umbrella” over South Korea and Japan. In South Korea, North Korea’s successful launching of a three-stage rocket in December and its nuclear test last month were unsettling enough that several right-wing politicians began calling on their government to build nuclear arms. A news release from the South Korean Defense Ministry on Thursday said that the “extended deterrence” Mr. Hagel reaffirmed for South Korea included “nuclear umbrella” and “missile defense capabilities.” The allies also agreed to develop “customized” plans to deal with various types of threats posed by North Korea’s nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction, it said. North Korea has escalated its bellicose rhetoric since a Feb. 12 nuclear test. It threatened pre-emptive nuclear strikes against the United States and South Korea for conducting joint military drills and supporting United Nations sanctions against the North. In response, Washington has stood behind the new government of President Park Geun-hye, South Korea’s first female president, by running B-52 bomber sorties over South Korea earlier this month and publicizing them. It also signed an agreement last weekend to enhance consultation and coordination of the allies’ responses to North Korean provocations. Such coordination became all the more important with growing North Korean threats; under a mutual defense treaty, Washington is obliged to intervene should a local skirmish expand into a full-blown war. –NY Times