The North’s foreign ministry notified the USA government that it would effectively halt all communications with Washington through the North’s office at the United Nations in NY, state-run KCNA said.
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“Because the United States did not accept our demand that the sanctions be retracted, we are taking concrete actions one by one, the first of which is to completely cut off the NY channel of communication, the only official point of contact that has existed between the two sides”, KCNA said, citing the notice.
The US last week imposed new sanctions which describe Mr Kim as being directly responsible for a long list of serious human rights abuses.
North Korea has made a series of proposals to meet with the South Korean government over the past two months following its party congress in May, suggesting any misunderstanding between the two could be resolved once they sit down together, but Seoul has rejected all these proposals, saying they lack sincerity since the North is still pursuing its nuclear weapons program.
Positioning THAAD there would allow protection for major US military installations in the South from North Korean ballistic missiles, while limiting the range of its radar from reaching into China, media reports said.
In Washington, State Department spokesman John Kirby did not directly address the fate of the NY channel.
United States military bases in the South will also be protected by the missile system, but Seoul and its surrounding areas will be left out.
U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter and his South Korean counterpart Han Min-koo approved the decision, Ryu said.
The North frequently threatens to attack the South and US interests in Asia and the Pacific.
“Seongju County is the biggest producer of Chamoi, supplying around 70 percent of Chamoi in South Korea, with about 60 percent of the villagers working for the farming of Chamoi”, read an official protest letter from the governor.
North Korea threatened on Monday to take “physical action” against the planned deployment of the powerful anti-missile system.
USA and South Korean officials say THAAD only targets North Korea, but China and Russian Federation suspect it could also help US radars detect their own missiles.
In March, the UN Security Council imposed its toughest sanctions to date on North Korea after it carried out a fourth nuclear test and a long-range ballistic missile test soon afterwards.
The allies announced their decision last week to deploy the high-tech defense shield in South Korea by at least the end of 2017. South Korea now has PAC-2 and PAC-3 Patriot missiles in Seoul to counter North Korea’s ballistic missiles.
Beijing has sternly opposed the presence of the anti-missile battery on the southern part of the peninsula, arguing that it could be used by the United States to monitor its air space. Warmbier’s sentence is 15 years of hard-labor. Many South Koreans worry China, South Korea’s biggest trading partner, might take economic retaliatory measures.
There are also concerns that China could limit the number of Chinese tourists to South Korea.
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The US is a close ally of South Korea, maintaining 28,500 troops in South Korea, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean war.
