North and South Korea Stand on 'the Brink of War' - David Eimer, The Times
In a significant escalation of tensions, North Korea cancelled all military and political agreements after accusing Seoul of aggressive posturing. Pyongyang's decision to nullify all accords increases the prospect of an armed confrontation on the Peninsula, where over a million soldiers face each other across the Demilitarised Zone that divides the two Koreas.
North Korea's Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea blamed the South for pushing the two countries "to the brink of a war". Pyongyang said it now regarded the maritime border between the two states as "void". The last time the two countries clashed militarily was at the disputed frontier in the Yellow Sea, when their navies fought a deadly gun battle in June 2002.
In comments reported by state media in North Korea, the Committee, which is in charge of inter-Korean affairs, claimed that the relationship between the two sides had sunk to a new low.More at The Times.
North Korea Scraps Seoul Accords - Evan Ramstad, Wall Street Journal
North Korea said it will no longer abide by its military and economic agreements with South Korea, in another reaction to Seoul's unwillingness to restart the unconditional economic assistance it ended last year.
The statement Friday added to the criticism and verbal abuse that North Korea began directing at the South a few weeks after President Lee Myung-bak took office a year ago.
Mr. Lee ended a decade of unconditional outreach to North Korea by tying economic assistance to the reduction of Pyongyang's nuclear-weapons program. The move cost North Korea about $300 million last year, a sizable sum to the North, which produces just a few billion dollars in economic output annually.More at The Wall Street Journal.
South Korea Heightens Military Readiness as North Scraps Pacts - Choe Sang-Jun. New York Times
South Korea bolstered its military readiness and scrambled to figure out North Korea’s intentions on Friday, after the North declared that it was scrapping the agreements both countries had signed to ease military and political tensions on the divided peninsula.
North Korea’s decision followed a recent series of sharp comments and aggressive gestures that officials and analysts in Seoul said were aimed at gaining the attention of the new American administration and concessions from President Lee Myung-bak of South Korea.
“Relations between the North and South have worsened to the point where there is no way or hope of correcting them,” said a statement on Friday from the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea, the North Korean agency in charge of relations with the South. A South Korean Navy destroyer has sailed into waters near the disputed western sea border with North Korea - the scene of naval skirmishes in 1999 and 2002 - to bolster defenses there, the national South Korean news agency Yonhap reported Friday, without citing sources.More at The New York Times.
Power Struggle Suspected in N. Korea - Andrew Salmon, Washington Times
North Korea's announcement Friday that it is scrapping all political and security arrangements with the South could be a cover for an ongoing policy struggle inside the secretive state's leadership, a Korea specialist here said.
"I think [North Korean leader] Kim Jong-iI is trying to coordinate different views, but these views are definitely competing," said Choi Jin-wook of Seoul's Korea Institute of National Unification. "And I think one view is the military's."
Pyongyang's Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea said Friday that agreements "putting an end to the political and military confrontation between the North and the South will be nullified." These include a 1992 agreement on recognition of the Northern Limit Line, the de facto sea border between the Koreas in the Yellow Sea.More at The Washington Times.