SEOUL/UNITED NATIONS: North Korea yesterday threatened to scrap an armistice that ended the 1950-53 civil war and sever a military “hotline” with the US if Seoul and Washington pressed on with two-month-long war games.
It was a notable sharpening in the North’s bellicose rhetoric and followed word from UN diplomats on a draft sanctions resolution that would punish North Korea for its third nuclear test it conducted last month.
“We will nullify the Korean armistice,” the North’s KCNA news agency said, quoting the Korean People’s Army Supreme Command.
“The war exercise being done by the USs and the puppet South Korea is a systematic act of destruction aimed at the Korean armistice.”
The two Koreas remain technically at war since the 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce rather than peace. “We will suspend activities of the KPA representative office at Panmunjom (truce village) that had been tentatively operated by our army as the negotiating body to establish a peace regime on the Korean peninsula,” the command said. Agencies
