After days of increasingly hostile rhetoric, North Korea said it was cutting off contact with South Korea.
After days of increasingly hostile rhetoric, North Korea on Tuesday said it was cutting off all communication with South Korea, renewing tensions after a lull during which both countries battled the threat of the coronavirus.
Despite three face-to-face meetings between the leaders of the two Koreas that year, improvement in relations and inter-Korean projects have been on ice after nuclear negotiations between U.S. and North Korea broke down last year.
Story continues"The recent reckless acts of the human scum who frantically scattered anti-DPRK leaflets ... [is a] heinous provocation of hurting our supreme leadership," North Korea official Rodong Sinmun said in a statement Tuesday, referring to the country by its official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea."It is none other than the South Korean authorities who must pay a dear price for it.
In a statement last week, Kim Yo Jong, Kim's sister, also threatened to scrap a military agreement between the Koreas and pull the plug on a joint industrial complex that has been sitting dormant. Go said North Korea may have planned on moves earlier in the year in hopes of restarting talks with the U.S., but the global threat of the coronavirus appears to have gotten in the way. The country, which shares a 880-mile border with China, was among the first to seal its borders to all foreigners. It claims it has had zero infections, an assertion some observers doubt.
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