North Korea blows up road, rail links with ‘hostile state’ South Korea

Pyongyang says move is a response to the ‘grave political and military provocations of the hostile forces’.

North Korea has blown up sections of its road and railway links with South Korea and labelled its neighbour a “hostile state”, state media has said.

The Korean People’s Army destroyed the 60-metre-long (about 200ft) stretches of road and rail along the east and west sections of the inter-Korean border “as part of the phased complete separation” of North and South, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said on Thursday.

“This is an inevitable and legitimate measure taken in keeping with the requirement of the DPRK Constitution which clearly defines the ROK as a hostile state, and due to the serious security circumstances running to the unpredictable brink of war owing to the grave political and military provocations of the hostile forces,” the KCNA said, using the acronyms of the official names of North and South Korea.

KCNA cited a Ministry of Defence spokesman as saying Pyongyang would take further measures to “permanently fortify” the border without providing details.

The move to label South Korea a “hostile state” comes after North Korea’s Supreme People’s Assembly met last week to rewrite the secretive country’s constitution.

In a speech to his country’s rubber-stamp parliament in January, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said that reunification with South Korea was no longer possible and the constitution should be changed to define its neighbour as a separate “hostile” country.

“We don’t want war, but we have no intention of avoiding it,” Kim was quoted as saying by KCNA at the time.

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff on Tuesday announced that the North Korean military had blown up northern sections of disused roads dividing the neighbours.

Tensions between the Koreas, which remain technically at war after fighting in the 1950-53 Korean War ended without a peace treaty, have been escalating since last year’s unravelling of a 2018 military accord aimed at reducing the risk of military clashes along the border.

North Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs last week threatened “retaliation” against South Korea after accusing it of operating propaganda leaflet-carrying drones over the capital Pyongyang.

The South’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said at the time that it could not confirm the North’s claims while urging its neighbour to “exercise restraint and not act recklessly”.