North Korea up in arms over South's floodlit Christmas tree

SEASONAL GOODWILL is in short supply on the divided Korean peninsula, where both sides are again at potentially deadly loggerheads – over a Christmas tree.

North Korea’s military is reportedly preparing to shoot down a floodlit tower decorated in Christmas lights, which overlooks the border, north of the South’s capital Seoul which is home to millions of Christians.

The governor of the local province, Kim Moon Soo, is warning that firing at the tree would be reckless and “provocative”. The South’s defence minister was blunter. “We’ll retaliate decisively to take out the source of any shelling,” Kim Kwan Jin told parliament yesterday.

South Korea’s Yonhap news agency says fighter jets are on standby nearby, ready to strike back.

Standing 100ft tall, topped off with a crucifix and decorated with 100,000 light bulbs, the tower can be seen for miles inside the impoverished Stalinist backwater, where electricity cuts are common and ageing power plants creak out a fraction of the South’s power output.

Pyongyang scoffs at Seoul’s claims that its purpose is religious, not political, and says it is psychological warfare.

Seoul resumed blasting unwanted messages through giant loudspeakers across the demilitarised zone (DMZ) in May, after an international panel blamed the North for sinking a warship with the loss of 46 South Korean sailors.

Pyongyang has threatened to shell the speakers and warned this week that the renewed propaganda offensive risks starting all- out war. Threats like that forced organisers to declare a moratorium on the annual tree-lighting ceremony in 2004.

Both sides have been on hair-trigger alert since the North shelled Yeonpyeong Island last month in disputed waters near its border, killing two civilians. Pyongyang pulled back from threatened retaliation on Monday after the South Korean military fired thousands of shells on the island during live-fire drills.

About 400 pilgrims, politicians and military brass yesterday gathered around the tree for a lighting ceremony on the 165-metre Aegibong Peak, about 3km from the DMZ. The ceremony was organised by the Full Gospel Church, a Seoul-based Christian group that is demanding “an end to North Korean provocations”, said online newspaper NK Daily. The newspaper said the church was blocked from lighting the tree on previous years to “avoid antagonising” Seoul’s prickly northern neighbour.

South Korean soldiers have been dispatched to the peak around the tree to protect it from shelling, according to the Yonhap agency, amid reports that Northern soldiers were “preparing to shoot at it”.