The United States on Tuesday urged North Korea to stop behaviours that threaten a further escalation of tensions in the region, after reports that it destroyed parts of roads on the northern side of the demarcation line with South Korea.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff in Seoul said that Pyongyang on Tuesday blew up parts of two roads near the Military Demarcation Line separating the two countries, according to the South Korean news agency Yonhap.
North Korea had announced plans to cut off all road and rail connections with its southern neighbour last week, amid a pickup in tensions.
State media said the measures were aimed at safeguarding national security and preventing war, although there have been no direct exchanges across the heavily militarized border for several years.
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said that North Korea was continuing “to take steps that raise tensions,” adding Washington was encouraging its leadership “to take the opposite path, to reduce tensions, and stop any actions that could increase the risk of conflict.”
Miller added that Washington was monitoring the situation in North Korea in coordination with Seoul.
“We continue to urge the DPRK to reduce tensions and cease any actions that would increase the risk of conflict, and we encourage the DPRK to return to dialogue and diplomacy,” Miller added using the acronym of the North’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
Also on Tuesday, North Korean state media reported that leader Kim Jong Un held a security meeting following what Pyongyang says were incursions by South Korean drones across the border.
At the Monday meeting, Kim Jong Un was briefed on “the case of enemy’s serious provocation that violated the sovereignty” of North Korea and “set forth the direction of immediate military action,” state-controlled KCNA news agency reported.
On Saturday, North Korea claimed that Seoul had sent unmanned drones with anti-North Korean leaflets to Pyongyang three times in the space of a week.
Authorities in Seoul said they could not confirm whether the North’s claims were true, Yonhap reported. The North Korean leader’s influential sister, Kim Yo Jong, on Sunday warned of a “horrible disaster” if more drones are detected.
Tensions have risen on the Korean Peninsula after Pyongyang significantly expanded its missile tests over the past two years, while sharpening its rhetoric against the United States and South Korea. It has also strengthened its military cooperation with Russia.
At the end of 2023, Kim Jong Un had described inter-Korean relations as such between two warring states at a meeting of the ruling Workers’ Party. He had also demanded that South Korea be designated as the main enemy in the country’s socialist constitution.
