North Korea rejects South's offer of envoys, vows to send back troops to border
17 June, 2020
North Korea said on Wednesday (Jun 17) it comes with rejected South Korea's present to send special envoys to help ease escalating tensions over defector activity and stalled reconciliation work, vowing to redeploy troops to demilitarised border units.
The announcements created by state media agency KCNA came a day after North Korea blew up a joint liaison office setup in a border town as part of a 2018 peace agreement by both countries' leaders.
Any moves to invalidate cross-border peace deals pose a major setback to South Korea's President Moon Jae-in's initiatives to foster more lasting reconciliation with the North.
They may possibly also complicate initiatives by US President Donald Trump, already grappling with the coronavirus pandemic and anti-racism protests, to persuade Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear and missile programmes.
On Monday, Moon wanted to send his national security adviser Chung Eui-yong and spy chief Suh Hoon as particular envoys, KCNA said. But Kim Yo Jong, the sister of North Korean innovator Kim Jong Un and a senior ruling party official, "flatly rejected the tactless and sinister proposal".
"The solution for this crisis between your North and the South due to the incompetence and irresponsibility of the South Korean authorities is impossible and it can be terminated only once proper price is paid," KCNA said.
There is no immediate comment from Moon's office.
North Korea's Rodong Sinmun, the ruling Workers' Party's official newspaper, posted six high-resolution photos showing the liaison office before and following its demolition, alongside a number of KCNA articles and commentaries criticising South Korea.
"Ominous prelude to total catastrophe of North-South relations," one of the articles was headlined, discussing the office's destruction.
Kim Yo Jong also harshly criticised Moon in another KCNA statement, saying he had failed to implement the 2018 pacts and "set his neck in to the noose of pro-US flunkeyism".
Moon offered to play a good mediator role between Trump and Kim Jong Un as they pulled rear from trading threats and insults in 2017, leading to a series of meetings in 2018 and 2019 that were on top of symbolism but which failed to achieve a breakthrough on denuclearisation.
In Monday's speech, which marked the 20th anniversary of the first inter-Korean summit, Moon expressed regret that North Korea-US and inter-Korean relations have not made progress as hoped but asked Pyongyang to maintain peace deals and go back to dialogue.
"Found in the eyes of the Kims, Moon's administration gave an excessive amount of false hope that it could defy US pressure to go their relations forward," stated Chun Yung-woo, a good former South Korean nuclear envoy.
"But after 2 yrs, what they have left is a failed summit with Trump and no progress whatsoever about inter-Korean economical cooperation."
RE-ARMING BORDER
In another KCNA dispatch on Wednesday, a spokesman for the overall Staff of the (North) Korean People's Army (KPA) said it would dispatch troops to Mount Kumgang and Kaesong near to the border, where in fact the two Koreas had carried out joint economic projects during the past.
Moon and Kim Jong Un decided to "first normalise" both business initiatives at their third summit found in 2018 however they have made little headway due to denuclearisation negotiations around Pyongyang and Washington have stalled.
The KPA spokesman also said police posts that had been withdrawn from the heavily fortified Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) will be reinstalled, while artillery units near the western sea border, where defectors frequently send propaganda leaflets, will be reinforced and stand by on "top-class combat duty" readiness posture.
The North will also restart sending anti-Seoul leaflets over the border, he added.
Seoul's defence ministry has urged North Korea to follow a good 2018 inter-Korean military pact, under which both sides vowed to cease "all hostile works" and dismantled several structures along the DMZ.
Jang Kum Chol, director of North Korea's United Front side Department in charge of cross-border affairs, said the North won't have talks or exchanges later on with South Korean authorities "who evoke only disgust and nasty feelings".
"It is our stand that people had better regard everything that took place between the North and the South as a clear dream," he said, according to KCNA.
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