N. Korea scraps agreement on sea border with S. Korea

SEOUL, Jan. 30 (Yonhap) -- North Korea said on Friday that it is scrapping all military agreements with South Korea and declared a western sea border void, sharply raising tensions and the possibility of another naval clash.

The move nullified all reconciliatory accords reached between the two Koreas over
the past two decades, reviving tensions of the Cold War era. Pyongyang accused
the hardline Lee Myung-bak government of escalating cross-border hostilities.
"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, a body handling inter-Korean affairs, 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.
Earlier in January, North Korea's military warned of a possible naval clash,
accusing South Korea of preparing for war and saying it had been forced to take
"an all-out confrontational posture" against the South.
Tension has since risen along the western maritime border in the Yellow Sea,
called the Northern Limit Line, which Pyongyang claims to be invalid. The sea
border was unilaterally drawn by the U.S.-led United Nations Command at the end
of the 1950-53 Korean War, and North Korea insists it should be re-drawn farther
south.
Bloody naval clashes occurred there in 1999 and 2002, claiming the lives of
scores of soldiers on both sides.
Friday's statement was more specific.
"First, all the agreed points concerning the issue of putting an end to the
political and military confrontation between the north and the south will be
nullified," it said.
"Second, the Agreement on Reconciliation, Non-aggression, Cooperation and
Exchange between the North and the South and the points on the military boundary
line in the West Sea stipulated in its appendix will be nullified," the statement
said, referring to the Yellow Sea.
South Korea put its military on heightened alert, but no unusual signs were
spotted along the border, officials at the presidential office Cheong Wa Dae
said.
"It seems to be an attempt to draw attention from South Korea and the U.S. as its
previous saber-rattling has drawn no major reactions," a senior official said on
condition of anonymity.
South Korean Unification Ministry spokesman Kim Ho-nyoun said the latest message
was more serious than previous warnings.
As to whether the latest move might be an attempt to draw the attention of the
new U.S. administration of Barack Obama, the spokesman said, "This is between the
South and the North."
North Korea has severely criticized Lee's recent nomination of a hawkish scholar
as the new unification minister in charge of relations with Pyongyang, calling
the appointment an "outright challenge."
Hyun In-taek, a political science professor at Korea University, was a key
architect of Lee's North Korea policy that links economic aid to Pyongyang's
denuclearization. Lee suspended South Korea's customary rice and fertilizer aid
to the North after taking office 11 months ago.
For Pyongyang, Hyun's appointment could be a final sign that Lee's hardline
stance has become inveterate, analysts said. But turning threats into action is
another issue, as such moves will be burdensome for the North, which is hoping to
mend ties with the new U.S. government and push negotiations for an
aid-for-denuclearization deal forward, they said.
"The North is sensing that South Korea's government is getting more
conservative," Koh Yu-hwan, a North Korea professor at Dongguk University, said.
"North Korea is saying that it won't just sit and watch. But to turn the threats
into action will be a burden for the North," he said.
hkim@yna.co.kr
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