N Korea responds aggressively to sinking charges

TENSIONS BETWEEN North and South Korea over a torpedo attack on a South Korean warship worsened significantly yesterday after Pyongyang said it would cut all relations with Seoul.

The North Korean authorities have also pledged to expel all South Koreans working north of the border over accusations that the North had attacked the naval vessel.

Rumours are flying of serious escalation, including reports that North Korean leader Kim Jong-il had mobilised his country’s 1.2 million troops in anger at an international report which found that North Koreans torpedoed the Cheonan corvette in March.

The assault cut the vessel in half and killed 46 sailors in South Korea’s worst maritime disaster since the 1950-53 Korean War, which ended with an armistice but no peace treaty.

South Korea has responded with fury, and says that it now plans to refer North Korea to the UN Security Council.

It will look for even more draconian sanctions than the ones currently imposed on the North since its nuclear weapon testing earned it the wrath of the international community. Seoul wants a unified international response to the incident, and has already received strong backing from the United States, one of its most steadfast allies.

North Korea vehemently denies the accusations, saying any retaliation would mean war, and has cranked up the aggressive language in a bout of sabre-rattling that has a threatening ring, even coming for a nation whose propaganda department is unstinting in its warlike tone.

The North referred to the South’s government as “military gangsters, seized by fever for a war”.

“Should the South side’s intrusions into the territorial waters of our side continue, the DPRK (North Korea) will put into force practical military measures to defend its waters as it had already clarified and the south side will be held fully accountable for all the ensuing consequences,” a senior official told North Korea’s KCNA news agency.

Pyongyang also said it would expel all South Korean government officials working at a joint industrial park in the northern border town of Kaesong, according to a report run by the official news agency.

Seoul announced at the weekend that it was ending trade relations with the North in response to the sinking.

It has also resumed propaganda broadcasts to the North, playing radio programmes broadcast via border loudspeakers.

The North is focusing on the South Korean president, Lee Myung-bak, saying that all relations will be cut until early 2013, when he could leave office.

No ship or air traffic will be allowed, and the psychological warfare would be met with “all-out counterattacks”, KCNA reported.

The North also ominously suggested that these “punitive measures” were only the first steps and that more would follow.

Meanwhile, US support for Seoul’s Blue House seat of government will initially take the form of two major military exercises off the Korean peninsula in a display of force intended to deter future aggression by North Korea, the White House said.

The US has 28,500 troops in South Korea.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expects the council to take action against North Korea, but China – North Korea’s main ally and a veto-wielding council member – has so far done little but urge calm on all sides.