SEOUL (SOUTH KOREA) – North Korea on Tuesday blew up a building set up in 2018 in a border town to function as a joint liaison office to foster better ties with South Korea after it warned of action if North Korean defectors continued their campaign, sending propaganda leaflets into the North.
The gleaming, blue-glass four-storey liaison office in Kaesong was “ruined with a terrific explosion,” North Korea’s state news agency KCNA reported.
The destruction of the building, which had been closed since January due to the coronavirus scare, is a major setback to efforts by South Korean President Moon Jae-in to coax North Korea into enhancing cooperation. It is also a further blow to US President Donald Trump’s hopes of persuading North Korea to give up its nuclear arsenal and open up to the outside world.
A surveillance video released by South Korea’s defence ministry showed a large explosion bringing down the building. The explosion also partially damaged a 15-storey high-rise building in the vicinity that had served as a residential facility for South Korean officials who staffed the liaison office.
When the office was closed in January, South Korea said it had 58 personnel stationed there.
“We are aware that North Korea destroyed the liaison office in Kaesong and remain in close coordination with our Republic of Korea allies,” a senior Trump administration official said.
Though the US State Department did not immediately comment, it announced that Deputy Secretary of State Stephen Biegun, the top US official dealing with North Korea, would travel with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to Hawaii on Tuesday.
Sources said Pompeo is slated to hold talks with top Chinese diplomat Yang Jiechi in Hawaii on Wednesday on issues including North Korea.
China is North Korea’s main ally and neighbour and shares US concerns about Pyongyang’s weapons programmes. US officials have stressed the need for Beijing to strictly enforce international sanctions on Pyongyang.
South Korea’s national security council said Seoul would sternly respond if North Korea continued to raise tensions.
The destruction of the building “broke the expectations of all people who hope for the development of inter-Korean relations and lasting peace on the peninsula”, deputy national security advisor Kim You-geun said in a briefing.
South Korean vice unification minister Suh Ho, who co-headed the liaison office, called the demolition “unprecedented in inter-Korean relations” and a “nonsensical act”.
Russia said it was concerned about the situation on the Korean peninsula and called for restraint from all sides.
Technically, reclusive North Korea and the democratic South are still at war because their 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce, not a treaty.
Tensions have been rising over the past few days with North Korea threatening to cut ties and retaliate over the propaganda leaflets, which carry messages critical of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, including human rights violations.
KCNA said the office was blown up to force “human scum and those, who have sheltered the scum, to pay dearly for their crimes”.
Several defector groups, which North Korea refers to as “human scum”, have regularly sent flyers over the border, together with food, $1 bills, mini radios and USB sticks containing South Korean dramas and news, usually by balloon or by floating bottles in the river.
‘TRAGIC SCENE’
The building was originally used to house offices for managing operations at the Kaesong Industrial Complex, a joint venture between the two countries, which was suspended in 2016 amid disagreement over the North’s nuclear and missile programmes.
South Korea spent at least 9.78 billion won ($8.6 million) in 2018 to renovate the building. While operational, South Koreans worked on the second floor and their counterparts on the fourth floor. The third floor held conference rooms for meetings between the two sides.
On Saturday, North Korean state media reported that Kim Yo Jong, the sister of the North Korean leader and a senior official of the ruling Workers’ Party, had ordered the department in charge of inter-Korean affairs to “decisively carry out the next action”.
“Before long, a tragic scene of the useless north-south joint liaison office completely collapsed would be seen,” she was reported as saying.
(Photos syndicated via Reuters)
This story has been edited by BH staff and is published from a syndicated field