North Korea threatened to scrap all military assurance agreements with South Korea on Thursday and warned of an immediate attack should Seoul intrude on the disputed maritime border, further raising tensions on the peninsula. Pyongyang’s threat to abandon the agreements – designed to prevent accidental armed clashes and protect the safety of South Korean workers in a Northern factory enclave – came as Seoul elevated its alert level and began anti-submarine exercises off the west coast of the peninsula.
The threats mark the most serious deterioration in relations between the neighbours, who are still officially at war, in more than a decade and have rattled international markets. They stabilised on Thursday and financial regulators in Seoul said overseas investors had overreacted to the sinking of the Cheonan, a South Korean warship, in March. The Korean won rose to Won1,224 per dollar for the first time in six sessions and the benchmark Kospi index closed up 1.6 per cent.
A joint international team last week found that North Korea was responsible for the sinking of the Cheonan.
North Korea “will completely nullify an accord which was signed by the two sides to prevent accidental clashes” in the Yellow Sea, Pyongyang’s official Korea Central News Agency said. The area is the scene of deadly clashes in the past.
Pyongyang also warned of an immediate attack. Seoul, the South Korean capital and home to more than 20m people, is in range of its artillery.
Events on the peninsula will dominate a summit of regional leaders in Seoul on Saturday with Wen Jiabao, Chinese premier, meeting his Japanese and South Korean counterparts. Beijing’s response to the sinking of the warship has been guarded and this makes it less likely that South Korea will be able to marshal support for tougher sanctions at the United Nations.
Tensions have mounted in recent days as the two Koreas threatened to sever ties and the North threatened conflict in response to any international sanctions.
The North’s military also said it would scrap safety guarantees for South Koreans crossing the border, raising fears about the safety of South Korean workers in the Kaesong industrial enclave.
Earlier this week, North Korea threatened to expel South Korean workers from Kaesong.
Scott Snyder, a Korea expert at the Asia Foundation, said the stand-off was the most serious in years.
“We’re talking about them taking down the buffer guards that had been put up during the engagement period,” Mr Snyder said, referring to South Korea’s “Sunshine policy” between 1997 and 2008. “It is like riding on a dangerous road with no guardrails on the side. It doesn’t necessarily mean that there is going to be an accident, but it increases the likelihood of one.”
The US has few policy options for dealing with North Korea. It has no diplomatic relations and talks about the North’s nuclear capabilities have ground to a halt. “The path here is really between how to send a message to North Korea that they can’t do these things with impunity, while at the same time avoid escalating the situation,” said Mr Snyder.
Government officials in Seoul played down the possibility of all-out war, stressing that they wanted to solve the problems through diplomacy.
Ç9; Russia said on Thursday that it would stage large-scale naval exercises off North Korea next month that were planned before the stand-off on the peninsula. Sailors “will be on a high level of alert and capable of reacting adequately to any threat”, the Russian Navy told Interfax.
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