The South Korean military confirmed on Tuesday that it fired warning shots near the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) as it had observed North Korea destroying roads leading south, behavior it described as “very abnormal” and condemned as belligerent.
Tensions between North and South Korea have soared during the tenure of outgoing President Joe Biden, but have significantly escalated in the past year as Pyongyang repeatedly attacks the South with balloons carrying trash and feces. The South Korean government has responded by threatening the use of force in response to any action that causes material harm, while communist dictator Kim Jong-un has repeatedly threatened to use nuclear weapons against the South and the United States.
The most recent wave of discord began this weekend when the North Korean regime accused Seoul of flying a drone into Pyongyang airspace as a menacing gesture. The South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), who run the military, denied that they had sent any such drone, though they left open the possibility that a private individual or entity did fly a drone into North Korea. The Kim regime has not offered any evidence for its claims regarding the drone, however, nor has any surfaced suggested that the incident occurred.
North Korean military officials announced a week prior to those allegations that it was preparing to destroy all roads leading to South Korea, which South Korean media noted was possible because the North had apparently mined the roads “late last year.” The destruction, Pyongyang state media claimed, was necessary as a “self-defensive measure for inhibiting war and defending the security of the DPRK [North Korea].”
The South Korean JCS confirmed on Tuesday that it had evidence the roads were destroyed on that day.
“The North Korean military conducted detonations, assumed to be aimed at cutting off the Gyeongui and Donghae roads, at around noon and is carrying out additional activities using heavy equipment,” the JCS told reporters. South Korean officials clarified that none of its soldiers or property was damaged by the explosions, but the roads had been constructed with loans the South granted the North years ago, and Seoul still expected the communist regime to pay.
“North Korea’s explosion of the northern part of the Gyeongui and Donghae roads is a clear violation of an inter-Korean agreement and a very abnormal act. We strongly condemn the North’s move,” the South Korean Unification Ministry denounced.
The JCS also confirmed that, as a preventive measure, South Korean soldiers fired “warning shots in areas south of the Military Demarcation Line.”
“The military is closely monitoring North Korean activities and has reinforced surveillance and alert posture in cooperation with the U.S., maintaining a state of full readiness,” the JCS added.
North Korea has yet to confirm the destruction in its official state media channels at press time. Kim Yo-jong, dictator Kim Jong-un’s powerful sister, published yet another outraged statement on Wednesday threatening to attack South Korea in response to the unproven drone incursion.
“We secured clear evidence that the ROK [South Korea] military gangsters are the main culprit of the hostile provocation of violating the sovereignty of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea by intruding into the sky over its capital city,” Kim Yo-jong said in her statement. “The provocateurs will have to pay a dear price.”
Kim did not provide any of the “clear evidence” she allegedly secured.
Kim Yo-jong has been at the forefront of publishing outrageous insults against South Korea over the alleged drone in the past week, comparing South Korea to “mongrels tamed by Yankees” and threatening the certain death of South Korean government officials.
“The moment that a drone of the ROK is discovered in the sky over our capital city once again will certainly lead to a horrible disaster,” she proclaimed in a statement on Saturday. “They will be in a fit of hysteria until their miserable deaths. Such scum should be thrown into a dumping ground.”
Separately, North Korea, through its flagship Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), announced over the weekend that it had prepared a “preliminary operation order” to deploy “important firepower” against South Korea in the event of the resumption of the Korean War. KCNA suggested North Korea was ready to open fire as soon as necessary on the South.
North and South Korea – and their allies, China and America – have been technically in a state of war since 1950, when the Korean War erupted. The active hostilities of the war ended with an armistice agreement in 1953, but neither side has surrendered or signed a peace treaty, making normal relations impossible. Both countries have for decades discussed “reunification,” albeit by drastically different terms, but Kim Jong-un largely abandoned that rhetoric in January, declaring that “reunification” was no longer among Pyongyang’s war goals and labeling South Korea a perennial enemy.
“It is the final conclusion drawn from the bitter history of the inter-Korean relations that we cannot go along the road of national restoration and reunification together,” Kim said in a speech that month, vowing that North Korea would work towards “completely occupying, subjugating, and reclaiming” South Korea.