North Korea threatened yesterday to reinforce its military presence in the previous sites of inter-Korean cooperation, the day after it bombed the Liaison Office with South Korea, in a new escalation of tension that was strongly condemned by Seoul. .
The North Korean army announced that it would resume military exercises in the border area and attend to send leaflets to the south, and a spokesman for the North Korean army said that the army would deploy units in Kumagang Tourist Complex and Kaesong Industrial Complex, and these two regions included joint projects between the two Koreas, where South Korean tourists were visiting Mount Kumagang until a North Korean soldier in 2008 killed a woman who had lost her way.
The North Korean spokesman added that the center guards, who were withdrawn from the demilitarized zone under an inter-Korean agreement in 2018, would be redeployed "in order to reinforce the guard on the front line."
On the other hand, South Korean Presidential Spokesman Yoon Doo Han said: "We warn that we will no longer tolerate unreasonable actions and statements from the North." ».
And the South Korean Ministry of Defense considered that the North's threats would violate several agreements concluded by the two Koreas if implemented. It stated in a statement that "the North will inevitably pay the price if such action is carried out."
The explosion of the liaison office in the cross-border Kaesong industrial zone on North Korean territory came after Pyongyang strongly protested that North Korean defectors in the south were sending anti-regime leaflets to the north.
The Korean War (1950-1953) included an armistice agreement, not a peace agreement, which means that the two neighbors are still technically at war. Calls for calm were issued from major western capitals after Pyongyang bombed the liaison office, which was established in September 2018.