Seoul, South Korea – South Korea called on the Russian ambassador to protest against Moscow’s new defense pact North Korea Friday as tensions continued to rise along Korea’s heavily fortified border with vague threats from Pyongyang and brief, seemingly accidental incursions by North Korean forces.
Earlier Friday, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s powerful sister issued a vague threat of retaliation after South Korean activists flew balloons carrying anti-Pyongyang propaganda leaflets over the border, and the South Korean military said it would had fired warning shots the day before at North Korean soldiers who briefly crossed the rivals’ land border before the third time this month.
That came two days after Moscow and Pyongyang reached an agreement pact promising mutual defense assistance if either is attacked, and a day later Seoul responded by saying this would happen consider supplying weapons to Ukraine to fight The invasion of Russia.
GAVRIIL GRIGOROV/POOL / AFP/Getty
South Korean Vice Foreign Minister Kim Hong Kyun called on Russian Ambassador Georgy Zinoviev to protest the deal between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un and called on Moscow to immediately halt its alleged military cooperation with Pyongyang to put.
Kim, the South Korean diplomat, stressed that any cooperation that directly or indirectly helps the North build its military capabilities would violate UN Security Council resolutions and threaten the South’s security, warning the consequences for Seoul’s relations with Moscow.
Zinoviev responded that he would convey Seoul’s concerns to his superiors in Moscow, the South Korean ministry said. According to Reuters, Zinoviev told Kim that threats and blackmail against Moscow over growing ties with Pyongyang are unacceptable.
Leaflet campaigns by South Korean civilian activists have led to a resumption of Cold War-style psychological warfare along the inter-Korean border in recent weeks.
JUNG YEON-JE / AFP via Getty Images
The South Korean civil activists, led by North Korean defector Park Sang-hak, said they had sent 20 balloons from the South Korean border town of Paju containing 300,000 propaganda leaflets, 5,000 USB sticks with South Korean pop songs and TV shows. dramas and 3,000 dollar bills. on Thursday evening.
Pyongyang hates such material and fears it could demoralize frontline troops and residents and ultimately weaken Kim Jong Un’s grip on power, analysts say.
In a statement carried by North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency, Kim Yo Jong, one of her brother’s top foreign policy officials, called the activists “turncoat scum” and issued an apparent threat of retaliation.
“If you do something that you were clearly warned not to do, it is only natural that you will have to deal with something that you did not have to take care of,” she said, without specifying what the North would do.
After earlier leaflets from South Korean activists, North Korea launched more than 1,000 balloons in which tons of garbage fell in South Korea, destroying roof tiles and windows and causing other property damage. Kim Yo Jong previously hinted that balloons could become the North’s standard response to leaflet distribution, saying the North would respond by spreading “tens of times more garbage than is being spread across us.”
In response, South Korea resumed anti-North Korean propaganda broadcasts with military loudspeakers at the border for the first time in years, prompting Kim Yo Jong to warn in another state media statement that Seoul was “creating a prelude to a very dangerous situation’. situation.”
Tensions between the Koreas are at their highest in years as Kim Jong Un accelerates his development of nuclear weapons and missiles and seeks to strengthen his regional position by joining Putin in a standoff against the US-led West.
South Korea, a growing arms exporter with a well-equipped military backed by the United States, says it is considering increasing aid to Ukraine in response. Seoul has already provided humanitarian aid and other support and joined US-led economic sanctions against Moscow. But it has not directly supplied ammunition, citing a long-standing policy of not supplying weapons to countries actively involved in conflict.
Putin told reporters in Hanoi, Vietnam, on Thursday that supplying weapons to Ukraine would be “a very big mistake” and said South Korea “doesn’t have to worry” about the new deal with North Korea if the South doesn’t plans aggression against Pyongyang. .
South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Tae-yul held separate phone calls with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Japanese Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa on Friday to discuss the new pact. The diplomats agreed that the agreement poses a serious threat to peace and stability in the region and pledged to strengthen trilateral coordination to address challenges posed by coordination between Moscow and Pyongyang, Cho’s ministry said in a statement declaration.
North Korea is extremely sensitive to criticism of Kim’s authoritarian rule and efforts to reach its people with foreign news and other media.
In 2015, as South Korea resumed loudspeaker broadcasts for the first time in 11 years, North Korea fired artillery rounds across the border, prompting South Korea to fire back, according to South Korean officials. No casualties have been reported.
The South Korean military said there are signs that North Korea is installing its own speakers at the border, although they are not yet working.
In the latest border incident, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said several North Korean soldiers working on unspecified construction work briefly crossed the military demarcation line separating the two countries around 11 a.m. Thursday.
The South Korean army sent out a warning and fired warning shots, after which the North Korean soldiers withdrew. The joint chiefs did not immediately release more details, including why they released the information a day late.
The South Korean military says the recent border violations were not intentional because North Korean soldiers did not fire back and retreated after the warning shots.
The South’s military has seen the North deploy large numbers of soldiers into frontline areas to build suspected anti-tank barriers, fortify roads and plant mines in an apparent bid to fortify their side of the border. Seoul believes the efforts are likely aimed at preventing North Korean civilians and soldiers from escaping to the South.
