North Korea said Thursday it will deploy new military hardware along the military demarcation line that separates it from the South after Seoul partially pulled back from a 2018 agreement designed to ease tensions along the border, state-run media reported. <\/p>\n
North Korea acted after Seoul vowed to increase its intelligence and surveillance along the demilitarized zone (DMZ) in response to the launch of North Korea\u2019s first-ever spy satellite on Tuesday, which analysts said could give Pyongyang information to better target opponents\u2019 forces. <\/p>\n
The reactive move by Seoul\u00a0represents a partial retreat from the Inter-Korean Military Agreement, which was signed in 2018 as part of efforts with the US to contain the threat of war on the Korean Peninsula \u2013 and broaden the buffer zone between the two Koreas. <\/p>\n
It was signed by then-South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Panmunjom on the border, with the text declaring \u201cthere will be no more war on the Korean Peninsula and thus a new era of peace has begun.\u201d <\/p>\n
But any goodwill generated by the agreement has evaporated in recent years. Kim, who did not get the concessions he wanted from the US and South Korea during subsequent talks, has since ramped up the North\u2019s ballistic missile program, pledging to give Pyongyang a nuclear deterrent like that possessed by Washington. <\/p>\n
In response to the North Korean buildup, the US and South Korea \u2013 along with Japan \u2013 have\u00a0stepped-up their military cooperation via exercises and deployments that Pyongyang sees as a threat. <\/p>\n
Earlier this week North\u00a0Korea\u00a0denounced the US for its potential sales of advanced missiles to Japan and military equipment to South\u00a0Korea, calling it \u201ca dangerous act\u201d in a report from KCNA. <\/p>\n
North\u00a0Korea\u00a0said it was \u201cobvious\u201d who the offensive military equipment would be aimed at and used against. <\/p>\n
On Thursday North Korea\u2019s Defense Ministry said that its army will \u201cnever be bound\u201d by the military agreement, vowing to deploy \u201cmore powerful armed forces and new-type military hardware in the region along the Military Demarcation Line,\u201d according to KCNA. <\/p>\n
It claimed that the agreement has \u201clong been reduced to a mere scrap of paper owing to the intentional and provocative moves\u201d of South Korea, and warned that it must \u201cpay dearly\u201d for its \u201cirresponsible and grave political and military provocations that have pushed the present situation to an uncontrollable phase,\u201d KCNA said. <\/p>\n
Pyongyang also said that South Korea will be held \u201cwholly accountable\u201d for clashes that may break out between the two Koreas. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe most dangerous situation in the area of the military demarcation line, where the world\u2019s most acute military confrontation lingers and any slight accidental factor may aggravate an armed conflict to an all-out war, has become irreversibly uncontrollable, due to the serious mistake made by the political and military gangsters of the \u2018ROK [Republic of Korea],\u2019\u201d KCNA said. <\/p>\n\n
North Korea said Thursday it will deploy new military hardware along the military demarcation line that separates it from the South after Seoul partially pulled back from a 2018 agreement designed to ease tensions along the border, state-run media reported. North Korea acted after Seoul vowed to increase its intelligence and surveillance along the demilitarized <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":12008,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-12007","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12007","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12007"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12007\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12008"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}