South Korea said it “regrets” that North Korea cut military communications channel until March 20 over protests that South Korea’s military exercise with the United States. The joint military exercises involve 26,000 U.S. troops and more than 50,000 South Korean troops will participate in the Key Resolve and Foal Eagle exercise all over South Korea beginning today. A South Korean spokesman called for DPRK to immediately withdraw the measure on the basis of inter-Korean agreements.
Category: North Korea
Mun Il Guk’s goal in the first half of play was all it took for the North Korean national football team to defeat a talented Saudi squad at the Kim Il Sung Stadium in Pyongyang yesterday. The well deserved win jumps North Korea into sole possession of second place during Group Two preliminary play in Asia – just one point behind neighboring South Korea.
The top two teams of each division advance to the 2010 FIFA World Cup which will be held in South Africa. North Korea has failed to qualify for the World Cup since its historic run in 1966 where they were defeated by Portugal in the quarter-finals.
U.S. warns North Korea over missile
The commander of U.S. forces, General Walter Sharp , in South Korea said they will have no choice but to launch a military response should North Korea test-fire its long-range missile. Sharp urged North Korea to stop provocations, and behave like a responsible country.The Korean peninsula has felt under threat in recent weeks when the North said it considers itself on the brink of war with the South.
North Korea is planning to test fire a long-range missile that could hit the west coast of the US, South Korean officials told state media. Any such test would further inflame regional tensions and follows Pyongyang’s warnings in recent weeks that it stands on the brink of open war with Seoul. South Korean government officials told the Yonhap news agency that they had received U.S. satellite images of a train carrying a suspected Taepodong-2 missile to Dongchangri, near the Chinese border where nuclear-armed North Korea is building a launch pad.
North Korea appears to be preparing to test-launch an intercontinental missile amid growing tensions on the peninsula, a South Korean intelligence source was quoted as saying.
“First, all the agreed points concerning the issue of putting an end to the political and military confrontation between the DPRK and the ROK will be nullified,” said a statement issued by the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea, the Pyongyang organization in charge of ties with Seoul.
“Second, the Agreement on Reconciliation, Non-aggression, Cooperation and Exchange between the DPRK and the ROK and the points on the military boundary line in the West Sea stipulated in its appendix will be nullified.”
“There is neither a way to improve (relations) nor hope to bring them back on track,” DPRK’s KCNA news agency. “The confrontation between the DPRK and the ROK in the political and military fields has been put to such extremes that the inter-Korean relations have reached the brink of a war.”quoted the committee as having said.
Kim Jong-il Meets Chinese Official
Kim Jong-il, the North Korean leader, met a senior Chinese Communist party official in Pyongyang on Friday in his first known meeting with a foreign visitor since reports that he suffered a stroke in August, Xinhua reported.
its getting hot in here. North Korean officials told a visiting U.S. expert last week that they had prepared more than 30 kilograms of plutonium for nuclear warheads, the AP reported. Selig Harrison, head of the Asia program at the Center for International Policy in Washington, said “All of those I met said the North has already weaponized the 30.8 kilograms (67.8 pounds) of plutonium listed in its formal declaration and that the weapons cannot be inspected.”
tension is brewing once again between the two koreas. the South Korean military is on high alert after the DPRK army spokesman released a statement warning about an “all-out confrontational posture. ” South Korean officials told local media they are taking the DPRK’s threat seriously and are preparing for “all possibilities.”
Communist North Korea has postponed a planned clampdown on market trading for fear of provoking widespread public resistance, reported AFP.
The regime, apparently fearful of undermining the state-directed economy, in late November announced plans to ban general markets that sell consumer goods from early 2009.