- South Korea summoned the Russian ambassador to protest Russia’s new defence deal with North Korea amid escalating border tensions.
- Kim Yo Jong, the sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, issued the threat after South Korean activists sent anti-Pyongyang leaflets across the border.
- Two days ago, Moscow and Pyongyang signed a mutual defence pact, after which Seoul considered providing arms to Ukraine.
South Korea The Russian ambassador was summoned on Friday to protest over the country’s new defense agreement with North Korea, as tensions along the border continue to rise over vague threats and brief, surprise incursions by North Korean troops.
Earlier on Friday, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s powerful sister issued a vague threat of retaliation after South Korean activists launched balloons carrying anti-Pyongyang propaganda leaflets across the border, and South Korea’s military said it had fired warning shots a day earlier to repel North Korean troops who crossed the rivals’ land border for the third time this month.
The incident came two days after Moscow and Pyongyang reached an agreement to provide mutual defense assistance if either country was attacked, and a day after Seoul responded that it would consider providing weapons. to Ukraine To fight off the invasion of Russia.
South Korea’s Deputy Foreign Minister Kim Hong-kyun summoned Russian Ambassador Georgy Zinoviev to protest the agreement reached between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un and called on Moscow to immediately halt its alleged military cooperation with Pyongyang.
Russian Ambassador to South Korea Georgy Zinoviev arrives at the Foreign Ministry in Seoul, South Korea, June 21, 2024. South Korea summoned the Russian ambassador on Friday to protest a defense deal with North Korea, two days after Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a pact pledging mutual defense with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on a state visit to Pyongyang. (Choi Jae-koo/Yonhap via AP)
South Korean diplomat Kim stressed that any cooperation that directly or indirectly helps North Korea boost its military capabilities would violate UN Security Council resolutions and pose a threat to South Korea’s security. He also warned of the consequences it could have on Seoul’s relations with Moscow.
Zinoviev told Korean officials that any attempts to “intimidate or blackmail” Russia are unacceptable and that his country’s agreement with North Korea is not targeted at any specific third country, the Russian embassy wrote on its Xinhua account. Zinoviev promised to convey Seoul’s concerns to his superiors in Moscow, the South Korean ministry said.
In recent weeks, a leaflet-distribution campaign by South Korean civic activists has reignited Cold War-style psychological warfare along the inter-Korean border.
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South Korean civic activists led by North Korean defector Park Sang-hak said they sent 20 balloons carrying 300,000 propaganda leaflets, 5,000 USB sticks with South Korean pop songs and TV dramas and 3,000 US dollar notes from the South Korean border city of Paju on Thursday night.
Analysts say Pyongyang is angered by such material and fears it could demoralize front-line troops and residents and ultimately weaken Kim Jong Un’s grip on power.
In a statement carried by North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency, Kim Yo Jong, one of her brother’s top foreign policy officials, called the activists “downtrodden trash” and threatened retaliation.
“When you do something that you were clearly warned not to do, it’s natural that you will have to do something that you shouldn’t have done,” he said, without specifying what North Korea would do.
After South Korean activists distributed previous leaflets, North Korea released more than 1,000 balloons that dropped tons of trash on South Korea, breaking ceiling tiles and windows and causing other property damage. Kim Yo Jong had previously hinted that balloons could become North Korea’s standard response to the leaflet distribution, saying North Korea would respond by scattering “dozens of times more garbage than is being dumped on us.”
In response, South Korea resumed anti-North Korea propaganda broadcasts with military loudspeakers installed along the border for the first time in years, prompting Kim Yo Jong to warn in another state media statement that Seoul was “preparing the prelude to a very dangerous situation.”
Tensions between the Koreas are at their highest level in years, as Kim Jong Un accelerates his nuclear weapons and missile development and seeks to bolster his regional position alongside Russian President Vladimir Putin in a standoff against the U.S.-led West.
South Korea, a growing arms exporter whose military is backed by the US, has said it is considering stepping up support to Ukraine. Seoul has already provided humanitarian aid and other assistance, while it has joined US-led economic sanctions against Moscow. But it has not provided arms directly, citing its longstanding policy of not providing arms to countries actively involved in the conflict.
Putin told reporters in Hanoi, Vietnam, on Thursday that supplying arms to Ukraine would be a “huge mistake,” adding that South Korea “should not worry” about the deal if it was not planning aggression against Pyongyang.
South Korea’s Foreign Ministry said Minister Cho Tae-yul held separate phone calls on Friday with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Japanese Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa to discuss the new agreement. Cho’s ministry said in a statement that the diplomats agreed that the agreement posed a serious threat to peace and stability in the region and vowed to strengthen trilateral coordination to deal with challenges posed by the alliance between Moscow and Pyongyang.
North Korea is extremely sensitive to criticism of Kim’s authoritarian rule and attempts to reach its people through foreign news and other media.
In 2015, when South Korea resumed loudspeaker broadcasts for the first time in 11 years, North Korea fired artillery shells across the border, prompting South Korea to retaliate, according to South Korean officials. No casualties were reported in the incident.
South Korea’s military said there were signs that North Korea was installing its own speakers along the border, although they were not yet functional.
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In the latest border incident, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said several North Korea Soldiers engaged in unspecified construction work briefly crossed the Military Demarcation Line dividing the two countries at around 11 am on Thursday.
The South Korean military broadcast a warning and fired warning shots, after which the North Korean troops retreated. The Joint Chiefs did not immediately release further details, including why they released the information a day late.
South Korea’s military believes the recent border incursion was not intentional as North Korean troops did not return fire and retreated after warnings.
The South Korean military has observed that North Korea has deployed large numbers of troops to border areas, building suspected anti-tank obstacles, strengthening roads and laying landmines to fortify its side of the border. Seoul believes these efforts are possibly aimed at preventing North Korean civilians and soldiers from fleeing to South Korea.
