South Korea has vowed to make North Korea pay a “harsh price” for a landmine explosion that injured two soldiers while patrolling the inter-Korean demilitarized zone (DMZ).
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Later on Monday, as part of its countermeasures, the South Korean military used loudspeakers to blare anti-Pyongyang rhetoric across the border, a defense ministry official said, resuming broadcasts that had been suspended since 2004.
At present, local time in North and South Korea and Japan is the same – nine hours ahead of GMT. The planting of such mines would violate the armistice that ended fighting in the 1950-53 Korean War, which still technically continues.
Due to the mines, two South Korean sergeants were critically wounded on August 4 when they were patrolling demilitarized zone in Paju. One soldier lost both legs in the blasts, while a second lost one leg.
North Korea is trying to increase $39 million from overseas buyers to help a brand new brewery in a Wonsan japanese port metropolis that the Hermit Nation hopes will turn into a brand new tourism hub.
Yang Wook, a North Korea analyst with the Korea Defense and Security Forum in Seoul says Pyongyang likely acted to intimidate the South and does not believe there will be any significant retaliation.
The leaflets listed names of North Korean officials “to be executed after reunification”, which included North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, his wife Lee Sol-ju and Hwang Pyong-so, the director of the North Korean military’s General Political Bureau.
Tension has flared in the past around sensitive points on the their de facto border, including North Korea’s shelling of an island in 2010 that killed two South Korean marines. But he said surveillance cameras in the area did not detect any suspicious North Korean activities, apparently because of bad weather and forest cover.
After its own investigation, the United Nations condemned the incident as a violation of the Armistice Agreement.
Military authorities are considering a wide range of responses if there is any further provocation, including a strike on North Korean guard posts.
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During and after the Korean War, both Koreas planted hundreds of thousands of mines in and near each side of the DMZ to thwart infiltrators. Pyongyang also refuses to release several South Koreans detained in the North. Things are expected to get worse next week when Seoul and Washington launch annual summertime military drills, which the allies say are routine but that Pyongyang calls an invasion rehearsal.
