North Korea threatens ‘crisis’ in last-ditch bid to sway Seoul

Bloomberg

North Korea threated a “security crisis” over US-led military drills, in what appeared to be a campaign to pressure South Korea’s pro-engagement president for greater support before he leaves office next year.
Training exercises scheduled to start on Monday risk sinking a two-week-old deal between Seoul and Pyongyang to improve ties, said Kim Yong Chol, a North Korean ruling party official. The remarks, reported on Wednesday by the official Korean Central News Agency, were the latest in a series of demands by top regime officials in recent days for a halt to drills.
“We will make them feel every moment how close they are to a huge security crisis,” Kim said. “We must let them know the cost of blowing up the opportunity to improve the inter-Korean relations and responding to our goodwill gesture with hostile actions.”
South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s government heralded the July 27 deal to restore cross-border communications that had been silent for more than a year as a turning point in talks with Kim Jong-un. But North Korea didn’t answer a hotline call two straight days and ignored regularly scheduled calls via a military communication line, signalling the good feelings may be short-lived.
North Korea’s shift appeared intended to leverage Moon’s desire to improve ties before he leaves office next year, getting him to advocate sanctions relief and driving a wedge between Washington and Seoul. More than 70 lawmakers from Moon’s progressive camp issued a joint statement last week calling for the exercises to be postponed to keep inter-Korean ties on track.
“Pyongyang sees that Moon’s days in the presidential Blue House are numbered and that Moon would like to mend inter-Korean ties as much as possible before he leaves office,” said Rachel Minyong Lee, a nonresident fellow with the 38 North Program at the Stimson Center. “North Korea seems to be using that to its advantage.”
The statement didn’t contain concrete rhetoric to back up the threats, said Lee, a former analyst for the US government. She said the hotlines with the South were low-lying fruit and Pyongyang could also increase pressure through moves such as short-range missile launches, closing an office that manages relations with Seoul and even firing off a longer-range missile.
North Korea tested two short-range ballistic missiles in March, the first since President Joe Biden took office. But it has so far refrained from the type of provocations it used when Barack Obama and Donald Trump began their presidencies, which included nuclear tests and long-range missile launches.
Even though North Korea may be facing some of the greatest food insecurity since Kim Jong-un took power nearly a decade ago, the leader hasn’t given indication he’s willing to unwind his nuclear arsenal in return for economic incentives.
Moon has been looking to revive stalled inter-Korean projects put on hold by political rancor but the bigger money for Kim come from easing international sanctions put in place to punish him for tests of nuclear weapons and missiles that could deliver a warhead to the US mainland.
State Department spokesman Ned Price said that the drills were “defensive in nature” and not a threat to Pyongyang’s leaders.