Destitute North Korea on Thursday threatened to end all relations with South Korea, a major source of aid and cash, in anger at the hard-line policies of its conservative president.
The move comes days after North Korea pledged to resume taking apart a nuclear plant that makes bomb-grade plutonium and return to a disarmament deal after the United States took the North off its terrorism blacklist and removed some trade sanctions.
”If the group of traitors keeps to the road of reckless confrontation with the DPRK [North Korea], defaming its dignity despite its repeated warnings, this will compel it to make a crucial decision including the total freeze of the North-South relations,” the North’s communist party newspaper said in a commentary, referring to South Korean President Lee Myung-bak.
The state media regularly hurls insults at Lee but this latest commentary was similar in form to a warning issued in April that was followed by the North cutting off direct dialogue and expelling South Korean officials from a joint factory park just north of the border.
The North has been angry at Lee since he took office in February and pledged to cut off what once had been largely unconditional aid. Analysts said the North, which often employs pressure tactics, may be moving now because it feels it has gained leverage through the nuclear agreement.
Under the compromise in a nuclear deal it has with China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States, North Korea pledged to allow in international inspectors to check claims it made about its nuclear programme after Washington removes it from a terrorism blacklist.
This gives the ostracised North more chance to tap into international finance and trade and could help it raise up its crippled industrial base and possibly make it easier for overseas investors to tap into its mineral wealth.
North Korea, with an economy that is less than 3% of the South’s, has seen aid from its rich neighbour cut drastically since Lee came to power promising huge investment and aid if the North gave up trying to create a nuclear arsenal.
But Pyongyang rejected his overtures, a move analysts said reflected its autocratic government’s fear that a large influx of South Korean businessmen would threaten its grip on one of the world’s most reclusive societies.
”This is a signal, or even a threat, to the South Korean government to change the direction of its policy,” said Koh Yu-hwan, a Dongguk University professor of North Korea studies. — Reuters