North Korea to cut all channels with South as "war may break out any time"

[WestVirginiaRebel]

Yahoo News:

SEOUL (Reuters) - Reclusive North Korea is to cut the last channel of communications with the South because war could break out at "any moment", it said on Wednesday, days of after warning the United States and South Korea of nuclear attack.

The move is the latest in a series of bellicose threats from North Korea in response to new U.N. sanctions imposed after its third nuclear test in February and to "hostile" military drills under way joining the United States and South Korea.

The North has already stopped responding to calls on the hotline to the U.S. military that supervises the heavily armed Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) and the Red Cross line that has been used by the governments of both sides.

"Under the situation where a war may break out at any moment, there is no need to keep north-south military communications which were laid between the militaries of both sides," the North's KCNA news agency quoted a military spokesman as saying.

"There do not exist any dialogue channel and communications means between the DPRK and the U.S. and between the north and the south."

The Pentagon condemned the latest escalation in North Korean rhetoric, with spokesman George Little calling Pyongyang's declaration "yet another provocative and unconstructive step."

The U.S. military announced on March 15 it was bolstering missile defenses in response to threats from the North, including a threat to conduct a preemptive nuclear strike against the United States.

Despite the shrill rhetoric, few believe North Korea, formally known as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), will risk starting a full-out war.

North and South Korea are still technically at war anyway after their 1950-53 civil conflict ended with an armistice, not a treaty, which the North says it has since torn to pieces.

The "dialogue channel" is used on a daily basis to process South Koreans who work in the Kaesong industrial project where 123 South Korean firms employ more than 50,000 North Koreans to make household goods.

About 120 South Koreans are stationed at Kaesong at any one time on average.

________

 

War of words escalates.

[Valin]

 

________

 

War of words escalates.

 

Late Nights At The Ministry Of Intimidation

March 29, 2013:

 

After over half a century of threats to again invade South Korea, the world is finally coming to realize that North Korea is bluffing. The northerners have never made good on these intimidation efforts. There have been some minor attacks, like a lot of commando operations in the 1960s, which evolved into kidnapping South Korean and Japanese civilians and landing spies via small submarines. Three years ago a South Korean warship was torpedoed and a South Korean island shelled. There have been a few minor incidents on the DMZ (demilitarized zone that separates the two countries) but that’s it. In short, the threats don’t have much impact and that makes North Korean leaders even angrier because they see their intimidation efforts being ridiculed and, well, ignored.

 

(Snip)

 

North Korea loves to play these mind games and has been doing it for decades. South Koreans now find it annoying or even amusing. Despite the declining impact of these intimidation broadcasts, North Korean media continues to broadcast threats against outsiders. Some of the latest ones include reminders that North Korean missiles (a few of them, anyway) can reach American military bases in Guam and Alaska, and a larger number of North Korean missiles can hit U.S. bases in Japan. This has, over the last decade, prompted Japan to invest heavily in anti-missile defense.

 

(Snip)

 

While North Korea has long maintained a large (over a million personnel) military, these troops are poorly led and equipped and there has been little cash for new equipment or training since the 1990s. In the last two decades the South Koreans have upgraded their own military to the point where it is considered on par with U.S. troops. But decades of threats from North Korea have instilled a degree of fear in South Koreans that cannot be shaken. The farther you are from Korea the more absurd the North Korean threats appear to be. But if you live within range of North Korea rockets or artillery, it’s hard to get a good laugh out of the situation.