North Korea yesterday warned of unpredictable disaster unless the South and the US stop allowing tours inside a heavily armed border buffer that is one of the most visited spots on the peninsula.
“If the US and the South Korean authorities persist in their wrong acts to misuse the DMZ [demilitarized zone] for the inter-Korean confrontation despite our warnings, these will entail unpredictable incidents including the loss of human lives,” the North’s KCNA news agency quoted a military spokesman as saying.
The BMZ is the 4km wide buffer running along the border drawn up under a truce that ended the Korean War.
An unidentified spokesman of the North’s Korean People’s Army said South Korea was engaged in “deliberate acts to turn the DMZ into theatre of confrontation with the [North] and a site of psychological warfare” by allowing tours inside the border zone.
The warning called on the South to halt tours for journalists to areas of the buffer zone that stretches across the peninsula.
Nearly half a million people a year visit the Panmunjom truce village inside the zone as well as other sites showing aspects of the Cold War’s last frontier an official in the city of Paju that borders the North said.
The city and the United Service Organizations, affiliated with the US military in the South, said they had no plans yet to cancel tours.
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