N. Korea declares void inter-Korean agreement on maritime boundary

SEOUL, Jan. 30 (Yonhap) -- North Korea Monday declared that it will not recognize the maritime border with South Korea in the Yellow Sea agreed upon by the sides nearly two decades ago, raising tensions in inter-Korean relations.

The North also said it will nullify all agreements on political and military
affairs between the sides.
"The group of traitors has already reduced all the agreements reached between the
north and the south in the past to dead documents," the North's Committee for the
Peaceful Reunification of Korea said in a statement carried by the state-run
Korean Central News Agency.
"Under such situation it is self-evident that there is no need for the DPRK to
remain bound to those north-south agreements," it said. DPRK is the acronym for
the North's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
The western maritime sea border in the Yellow Sea, called the Northern Limit
Line, was unilaterally drawn up by the U.S.-led United Nations Command at the end
of the 1950-53 Korean War. Pyongyang has claimed it should be re-drawn farther
south. The war ended in a ceasefire, not a formal peace treaty, leaving the two
Koreas technically at war.
Asked whether the saber-rattling is a message to the new U.S. administration of
Barack Obama to draw his attention to the nuclear issue, Seoul's Unification
Ministry spokesman Kim Ho-nyoun said, "This is between the South and the North."
He declined to comment further, saying an official statement will soon follow.
hkim@yna.co.kr
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