The decision to change North Korea’s time zone was announced last week, as Yahoo News reports, and implemented on midnight of August 15, the anniversary of the Korean Peninsula’s liberation during the Second World War.
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After the mine blasts which maimed two South Korean soldiers on border patrol, Seoul recently resumed high-decibel propaganda broadcasts across the heavily-militarised frontier, using batteries of loudspeakers that had lain silent for more than a decade.
Earlier this year, there had been hopes that the anniversary might be an opportunity for some sort of inter-Korean rapprochement, but instead inter-Korean ties have been on a downward trajectory for months.
Pyongyang rejected accusations that it was behind the mine incident as “absurd”, and its frontline army border command on Saturday demanded the broadcasts be halted immediately.
“But if North Korea joins the path of dialogue and cooperation, it will get a chance to develop its economy and improve people’s livelihoods”.
“They should not forget that the KPA military action means indiscriminate strikes which envisage even possible challenge and escalating counteraction”, it said.
Pyongyang often doesn’t back up its threatening rhetoric against Washington and Seoul, although Pyongyang did launch an artillery attack in 2010 that killed four South Koreans.
Lewis said Pyongsan was believed to be the most important uranium mine in North Korea and recent satellite imagery indicated that the Uranium Concentration Plant there was undergoing significant refurbishment.
On Saturday, the North’s powerful National Defence Commission threatened the United States with the “strongest military counter-action” should the joint exercise go ahead.
South Korean President Park Geun Hye said she will “sternly” deal with any North Korean provocation, hours after the Kim Jong Un regime threatened strikes over propaganda broadcasts in the demilitarized zone.
The resumption of the broadcasting in the areas along the division front “is a wanton violation of the military agreement” between the north and the south, a grave military provocation against the DPRK and a serious case of pushing the inter-Korean relations to the worst phase, said the notice, quoted by the official KCNA news agency of the DPRK.
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Because the armistice was never replaced by a full peace treaty, the two Koreas technically remain at war.
