On Monday Park said, “Even the North Korean elite class is recently showing signs of collapse, and some of North Korea’s key officials are defecting or seeking asylum overseas, signs that there is a possibility the system is shaking”.
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Korea’s largest annual combined military exercise with the United States, Ulchi Freedom Guardian (UFG), kicked off on Monday, with 25,000 American and 50,000 South Korean military personnel taking part.
Travel agents report that the number of South Korean visitors to Baekdusan on the border of China and North Korea has been declining rapidly in the wake of tension on the peninsula. North Korea was informed of the drills by the United Nations Command Military Armistice Commission.
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Last week, North Korea’s deputy ambassador to Britain, Thae Yong-Ho, defected to the South – a rare and damaging loss of diplomatic face for Pyongyang and a major PR victory for Seoul. -South Korean military drills.
“It is regrettable that North Korea threatens to conduct a pre-emptive nuclear attack on the South”, Jeong Joon-hee, ministry spokesman, told Yonhap news agency.
The North Korean Foreign Ministry has described the military exercise as an “unpardonable criminal act” that could bring the peninsula to “the brink of war”.
North Korean forces are “ready to mount a pre-emptive retaliatory strike at all enemy attack groups involved in Ulchi Freedom Guardian”, he said, referring to the exercise by its official name.
“North Korea’s nuclear and missile threats are direct and realistic”, Park added.
Korean War veterans react as they shout slogans to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un during a parade to mark the 60th anniversary of the signing of a truce in the 1950-1953 Korean War at Kim Il-sung Square, in Pyongyang July 27, 2013.
Income from the jointly operated Kaesong Industrial Complex, shut down in February, was also funneled to the slush fund, according to South Korean magazine Sisa Journal.
“As signs of serious cracks emerge, the likelihood of unrest in the regime is increasing”, South Korean Prime Minister Park Geun-hye said in regards to the defection.
Mr Thae, who lived in a flat in Gunnersbury Gardens, was ironically employed to monitor other North Koreans who had defected the communist state. The US is keen to integrate both its North Asian allies into military plans, pressing in the first instance for closer intelligence sharing, which is necessary to integrate US anti-ballistic missile systems in Japan and South Korea.
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An official from the Unification Ministry said that North Korea is in “a very hard situation” following the defection of the North Korean deputy ambassador to London.
