“This is a great event in the history of the Korean nation, as it is of great significance in completely eradicating the leftovers of the Japanese imperialists in all fabrics of social life”, the North’s state-run Korean Central News Agency said in a commentary earlier this week.
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“The claim that we planted no fewer than three mines to defend ourselves in front of the puppets” [South Korea’s] military police guard post 400 meters south of the Military Demarcation Line is absurd”, said the statement, released on August. 13 by the political bureau of North Korea’s National Defense Commission.
The two Koreas had blasted propaganda messages at each other across the border for years before the practice was discontinued by mutual agreement in 2004 during a period of rapprochement.
Tens of thousands of South Korean and US troops kicked off a large-scale military exercise Monday simulating an all-out attack by North Korea, which has condemned the joint drill as a “declaration of war”.
North Korea also warned that it would launch “indiscriminate strikes” unless the South calls off its own renewed propaganda broadcasts, which aim to undermine the reclusive state’s strict control of information.
A week after the landmine attack, the South restarted its propaganda broadcasts, infuriating North Korea, which has in the past threatened to blow up the huge speakers its neighbor set up at the demilitarized zone.
South Korean President Park Geun-Hye on Saturday urged Japan to match its words with deeds, after a speech by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe expressing remorse over wartime aggression fell short of Seoul’s expectations.
South Korea has been aggressively pushing to ink FTAs with trade partners in recent years to boost growth in the country’s export-driven economy.
Over the weekend, the North threatened to retaliate with “the strongest military counteraction” if the joint Ulchi Freedom Guardian exercise is not canceled.
Pyongyang is an “invincible power” and the country’s army possesses the “latest offensive and defensive means unknown to the world”, he stated.
The North has also targeted the US with its verbal broadsides, brandishing its nuclear arsenal with threats of retaliation over Ulchi Freedom.
North and South Korea are technically still at war as the 1950-1953 Korean War ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty.
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The fresh warnings came as both Koreas celebrated on Saturday the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Korean peninsula from Japanese colonial rule.
