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  • North Korea to cut S Korea links

    North Korea to cut S Korea links


    North Korea has announced that it will close the land border and cut non-military phone links with South Korea.

    North Korea's army has told the South "to strictly restrict and cut off all the overland passages" across the fortified border from 1 December.

    A Red Cross office in the North with the only civilian phone link will shut.

    If implemented the move will be a blow to inter-Korean relations which have deteriorated since South Korean President Lee Myung-bak came to office.

    And it comes despite some progress in international negotiations over dismantling North Korea's nuclear programme.

    The border closure decision had been taken because "reckless confrontation" from South Korea was "beyond the danger level", according to the North's official KCNA news agency.

    The agency report added: "The South Korean puppet authorities should never forget that the present inter-Korean relations are at the crucial crossroads of existence and total severance."

    The phone lines from the Red Cross office in the border village of Panmunjom were the only non-military link between the countries.

    Phone and mail links between ordinary people have been cut since the end of the 1950-53 war.

    Announcing the closure of the government-controlled Red Cross office, the North criticised the South for co-sponsoring a United Nations resolution criticising its human rights record.

    "It is really appalling that the puppet regime is taking a leading role in the racket of a so-called UN resolution on human rights in the North," the statement carried by KCNA said.

    A vote on the resolution is expected later in November. It comes a month after a UN human-rights investigator strongly criticised North Korea, urging it to end public executions and provide food for the people not just the elite.

    'Negative impact'

    South Korea's unification ministry's spokesman Kim Ho-Nyoun said he did not believe the North intended a complete border closure.

    "If the North carries them out, it would have a negative impact on what has been achieved in inter-Korean relations," he said.

    South Korea has funded the Kaesong industrial complex just over the border in the North, and a ban on border crossings would make it very difficult for the plant to continue operating.

    Some 30,000 North Korean workers are employed by South Korean companies at the complex, and jobs there are highly prized.

    Relations between the Koreas have become increasingly strained since February when conservative President Lee Myung-bak took office in Seoul, pledging to get tough with Pyongyang over its nuclear weapons programme.

    Last month North Korea threatened to reduce the South to rubble unless it stopped activists sending anti-Pyongyang leaflets attached to balloons into the communist state.

    Speculation

    Despite the hostile turn in inter-Korean relations, North Korea has continued to make progress in six-nation talks over its nuclear programme despite frequent setbacks.

    It says it is disabling its main nuclear plant at Yongbyon after the US removed the North from a blacklist of state sponsors of terrorism.

    The latest escalation in tension comes amid speculation that North Korea's leader Kim Jong-il may have suffered from a serious stroke, though the North has insisted he is in good health and still firmly in charge.
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  • #2
    North Korea using strong-arm nuclear tactics: Seoul

    North Korea using strong-arm nuclear tactics: Seoul


    SEOUL – North Korea may be hoping to squeeze concessions from the international community by refusing to let inspectors remove samples from a plutonium-producing nuclear plant, the South's foreign minister said on Thursday.

    South Korea's top nuclear envoy was quoted as saying the move was effectively a rejection of a promise North Korea made last month to allow for checks of its nuclear claims.

    North Korea called the issue an infringement on its sovereignty, saying it was not part of a disarmament-for-aid deal struck with the United States, China, Japan, Russia and South Korea.

    "If we consider North Korea's clear negotiation pattern, its strategy has always been to create a crisis before resolving something, and trying to use that point to secure further concessions," Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan told a seminar.

    The North's statement came a little after Barack Obama met President George W. Bush at the White House and may serve as a reminder to the president-elect that Pyongyang, which uses its nuclear threat to get a seat at the table with world powers, does not want to be ignored by the new administration, analysts said.

    "North Korea doesn't want to be the top policy concern of the U.S. administration because that is too dangerous. But it always wants to stay somewhere in the top five," a diplomatic source familiar with the North said.

    North Korea reached a deal last month to resume disabling its Soviet-era Yongbyon nuclear plant and allow in inspectors to verify claims it made about its atomic arms program after the United States removed it from a terrorism blacklist and rolled back trade sanctions.

    The United States estimates the North has produced about 50 kg (110 lbs) of plutonium, enough for six to eight nuclear bombs.

    In Washington on Wednesday, State Department spokesman Robert Wood said North Korea was obligated by "understandings" reached last month to allow such sampling.

    Border

    Pyongyang has also threatened to close its land border with the South from next month, angered by the hard-line approach of Seoul's conservative government over its nuclear weapons program.

    The South's Defense Ministry said on Thursday it had sent a message to the North expressing its concern over the move to stop the few exchanges that exist between the states divided since the Cold War.

    North Korea has already begun restricting visitors from its main benefactor China, travel agents said, including virtually closing off one of its main land border crossings at Dandong.

    Travel agents in China, who send a steady though small flow of tourists to North Korea, said they were still organizing visits, though trips had to be made via air rather than by rail.

    China's relations with North Korea have long been characterized as being "as close as lips and teeth" after they fought side-by-side during the 1950-53 Korean War.

    Beijing had increased the number of troops on its border with North Korea to prevent against a possible flood of refugees flowing into its country if North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, though to have suffered a stroke in August, lost control of his state, the Financial Times on Thursday reported U.S. officials as saying.
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