North Korea has vowed to cut all ties with South Korea and has disconnected several key links of communication with its southern neighbor as a response to the South’s tactics of imposing economic sanctions on the North over the issue of sinking one of south’s warships.
Seoul’s unification ministry said on Wednesday that Pyongyang has severed communication lines connecting maritime officers and those connecting Red Cross authorities in North and South Korea.
US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, who stopped over in Seoul for a few hours, said that the US will support South Korea and termed the sinking of the warship Chenoan as a provocation which cannot be accepted, adding that it was the duty of the international community to respond to the situation.
According to KCNA, Korea Central News Agency, the North said on Tuesday that it will now totally freeze the relations between the two Koreas, and put an end to the non-aggression agreement between the two countries.
However, South Korean workers were allowed to work at the Kaeson industrial park which is a joint initiative of the two nations and an attractive means of income for Pyongyang. Military lines also continued to work, as reported by the unification ministry of South Korea.
North Korea has reacted angrily to the accusation of sinking the Chenoan and compared it to a declaration of war. It called it a false accusation made by the ruling party in the South as locals elections are due next week in the South. Pyongyang called the South’s government as “military gangsters “and said that it would retaliate if the South crossed into its waters.
The US has said that China, the North’s only major supporter, shares its view of a Korean Peninsula without nuclear weapons and that North Korea should be dealt with careful consideration over a period of time.
Whereas the US has fully supported Seoul’s move to tighten sanctions on the North and termed them as “entirely appropriate”, China has urged restraint but has been unwilling to support the international report on the sinking of the South Korean warship.
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