North Korea threatens to again suspend ties with South over joint military drills with US
- Last week brought a diplomatic breakthrough but Kim Jong-un’s sister on the weekend said Pyongyang would watch ‘whether the South Korean side stages hostile war exercises’
- North Korea has sought for decades to leverage the prospect of talks to scale back US-South Korea military drills, which former president Donald Trump controversially agreed
“Our government and army will closely follow whether the South Korean side stages hostile war exercises in August or makes other bold decisions,” said the younger Kim, who is a senior official with the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea. “Hope or despair? Choice is not made by us.”
The US and South Korea still planned to start the exercises on August 10, despite the warning, the Dong-A Ilbo newspaper reported on Monday.
South Korea’s defence ministry on Monday repeated their earlier statement that the timing and scale of summertime military exercises had yet to be finalised.
“South Korea and the US are having close consultations taking into account related situations,” spokesman Boo Seung-chan said.
The South’s Unification Ministry also said Seoul also reject the idea that the joint military drills should lead to strained relations with Pyongyang.
“The unification ministry has consistently worked in a wise and flexible manner based on the stance that South Korea-US joint military drills should not be used as a chance to heighten tensions on the Korean peninsula under any circumstances,” ministry spokesman Lee Jong-joo said.
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Cheong Seong-chang, a senior researcher at the Sejong Institute in Seoul, said Pyongyang’s statement would compels Seoul to proceed with the exercises to avoid the appearance of succumbing to pressure.
“It is possible for the South to reduce the scale of the exercises through consultation with the US due to the pandemic, but it is difficult to scrap the exercises in the face of continuing threats from the nuclear-armed North Korea,” Cheong said.
Professor Yang Moo-jin from the University of North Korean Studies said it was unlikely Pyongyang would overturn this agreement.
“These joint military drills are focused on checking command posts’s capabilities rather than mobilisation of troops and field operations,” Yang said. “Therefore the North would not feel threatened so seriously.”
The two Koreas last week reopened hotlines that had been silent since a flare-up a year ago, when Kim’s regime symbolically blew up a liaison office on its side of the border funded by Moon’s government. The US has offered its support for the move by the two leaders to improve relations, saying it might help stalled nuclear talks.
Moon’s office last week denied reports the two sides were in talks to hold a possible summit and reopen the liaison office.
Over the past several months, North Korea has published statements from Kim’s sister to temper prospects of a breakthrough and to chastise South Korea for what Pyongyang sees as it spoiling relations on the peninsula.
“Those inside and outside South Korea are freely interpreting its meaning their own way and there is even a public opinion about the issue of the north-south summit,” Kim Yo-jong said. “I think it is a premature hasty judgment. What I think is that the restoration of the communication liaison lines should not be taken as anything more than just the physical reconnection.”
