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Bloomberg
North Korea said it was shutting a liaison office it shares with South Korea from Tuesday and severing communication over a leaders’ hot line, putting pressure on Seoul to break with Washington’s effort to isolate the country.
North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said the state was taking the move because South Korean authorities had “connived†to carry out “hostile acts†against the country. The statement appeared to be referring to leaflets critical of leader Kim Jong-un being floated by balloons across the border by anti-
Pyongyang activists in South Korea.
“This measure is the first step of the determination to completely shut down all contact means with South Korea and get rid of unnecessary things,†KCNA said, adding that North Korean officials Kim Yong Chol and Kim Jong-un’s sister Kim Yo Jong gave the instruction to “completely cut off all the communication and liaison lines†with the South.
The move could end up stoking tensions between South Korea and the Trump administration, which have long differed over how to engage with the Kim regime. North Korea has for months shunned President Moon Jae-in’s offers for talks and slammed him for standing by US sanctions, which are part of Donald Trump’s “maximum pressure†campaign to force Kim to give up his nuclear weapons.
The regime has so far ignored Moon’s limited proposals for restoring some of the economic and trade ties that once represented for as much as about 10% of North Korea’s economy.
That money has dwindled to virtually nothing since global sanctions were imposed on Kim’s regime for 2017 tests of nuclear weapons and long-range missiles in defiance of United Nations resolutions.