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Seoul: North Korea did not respond to routine calls on inter-Korean hosted lines on Tuesday, South Korea, hours after a senior official of Pyongyang warned the south and the United States. United compared to the annual common military exercises begin this week.
Kim Yo Jong, the powerful sister of the North Korean leader Kim Jong United Nations, accused South Korea of ”Perfidious Behavior” to move forward with the exercises after North Korea decided to restore the lines of Winter at the end of July, after cutting them last year in the midst of the rise in tensions.
South Korea and the United States must contain computer simulated exercises next week, but preliminary training started on Tuesday, military sources told Reuters.
In a statement adopted by the North Korean News Agency, KCNA, Kim Yo Jong stated that the exercises were an “act of self-destruction for which a dear price should be paid because they threaten the safety of our people and at risk The situation on Korean Peninsula “.
“They are the most alive expression of American hostile politics (North Korea), designed to stifle our state by force,” she said.
The two Korea generally record on the hotlines twice a day and the North Korean officials responded to morning calls as usual on the information lines on the military of South Korea as well as those used by the Ministry of Unification, which manages relations with the North.
But when the South made calls at the end of the afternoon, they were unanswered, the departments of unification and defense said.
A Department of the United States Defense refused to comment on the North Korean declaration and said it was against the policy to comment on training.
“Combined training events are a rok-u.s. The bilateral decision and any decision will be a mutual agreement, “said Martin Meiners spokesperson, using the initials of the official name of South Korea.
A spokesman for the Korea of South Korea refused to comment on the preliminary exercises at a briefing Tuesday and said that the two countries still discussed the schedule, scale and method of regular exercises. .
The Ministry of Unification of South Korea stated in a statement that it does not speculate on the intentions of North Korea but preparing for all possibilities.
Yang Moo-Jin, professor at the University of Studies North Korean in Seoul, said Pyongyang positioned themselves in front of future talks with South Korea and the United States.
“Although (Kim) mentioned” perfidious behavior “, his tone seemed relatively chosen because she did not threaten the specific actions they could take, unlike the past,” he said.
The United States has kept about 28,500 troops in South Korea – a heritage of the Korea’s war of 1950-1953, which ended in an armistice rather than in a peace transaction, leaving the peninsula in a state technical war.
Joint military exercises have been moved in recent years to facilitate discussions to persuade Pyongyang to dismantle its nuclear and missile programs in exchange for US sanctions.
But the negotiations collapsed in 2019 and, while North Korea and the United States say they are open to diplomacy, both say that it belongs to the other side of taking action.
Kim stated that US military actions have shown that the discussion of Washington diplomacy is a hypocritical coverage of aggression on the peninsula and peace would only be possible if the United States dismantled its military strength in the South.
