N-Korea Cuts Military Hotline with South, To Make Drastic Turn

Local Editor

North Korea severed its military hotline with South Korea on Wednesday, suspending the last direct communication link between the two countries at a time of heightened military tensions.

The decision coincided with an announcement that the North's top political leadership would meet in the next few days to discuss an unspecified "important issue" and make a "drastic turn."

The hotline move was relayed by a senior North Korean military official to his South Korean counterpart just before the link was severed.
"Under the situation where a war may break out any moment, there is no need to keep up North-South military communications," the official was quoted as saying by the official Korean Central News Agency.

"From now, the North-South military communications will be cut off," he said.
Several weeks ago North Korea severed the Red Cross hotline that had been used for government-to-government communications in the absence of diplomatic relations.
Severing the military hotline could affect operations at the Seoul-funded Kaesong industrial complex in the North, as the hotline was used to organize movement on people and vehicles in and out.

The industrial estate- established in 2004 as a symbol of cross-border cooperation- has remained operational despite the repeated crises in inter-Korean relations.
Earlier Wednesday the North announced an imminent meeting of the ruling party politburo and launched a scathing attack on South Korea's new president, Park Geun-Hye.

The North's Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea, accused Park of slander and provocation after she made a speech warning the North that failure to abandon its nuclear weapons program would result in its collapse.
"If she keeps to the road of confrontation... she will meet a miserable ruin," the committee said.
On Tuesday, North Korea's military put its "strategic" rocket units on a war footing, with a fresh threat to strike targets on the US mainland, Hawaii and Guam, as well as South Korea.

Pentagon spokesman George Little said US forces were ready to respond to "any contingency," while Japan, which hosts a number of US bases, said its government was "on full alert."

Source: News Agencies, Edited by moqawama.org