South Korea’s military yesterday said that it would resume all military activities along the demarcation line separating the two Koreas and the North West Islands after suspending an inter-Korean military agreement.
The suspension of the military agreement with North Korea, which South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol approved earlier yesterday, is in response to North Korea’s decision to send hundreds of balloons carrying trash over the border.
“The South Korean military makes it clear that it will take all necessary measures to protect the lives and safety of its people in response to North Korea’s provocations,” a South Korean Ministry of National Defense official said at an emergency briefing.
Photo: Reuters
The large-scale spraying of filth balloons has “seriously threatened the safety of our people and caused property damage,” the official added.
Pyongyang on Sunday said it had sent up 15 tonnes of wastepaper using 3,500 balloons, while Seoul vowed “unendurable” measures in response, which could include blaring propaganda from loudspeakers directed at North Korea.
Under the pact, both nations agreed to “completely cease all hostile acts against each other” that are the source of military tension and conflict, through measures such as the two sides ending military drills near the border.
It was the most substantive deal to come out of months of historic summit meetings between the two Koreas in 2018, but had been all but scrapped when Pyongyang declared last year it was no longer bound by it.
Since then, North Korea has deployed troops and weapons at guard posts near the military border.
About 50 North Koreans were seen from South Korea yesterday building a fence, stretching a few hundred meters, leading to a guard post on a hill, a witness said.
The Philippines yesterday said its coast guard would acquire 40 fast patrol craft from France, with plans to deploy some of them in disputed areas of the South China Sea. The deal is the “largest so far single purchase” in Manila’s ongoing effort to modernize its coast guard, with deliveries set to start in four years, Philippine Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Ronnie Gil Gavan told a news conference. He declined to provide specifications for the vessels, which Manila said would cost 25.8 billion pesos (US$440 million), to be funded by development aid from the French government. He said some of the vessels would
CARGO PLANE VECTOR: Officials said they believe that attacks involving incendiary devices on planes was the work of Russia’s military intelligence agency the GRU Western security officials suspect Russian intelligence was behind a plot to put incendiary devices in packages on cargo planes headed to North America, including one that caught fire at a courier hub in Germany and another that ignited in a warehouse in England. Poland last month said that it had arrested four people suspected to be linked to a foreign intelligence operation that carried out sabotage and was searching for two others. Lithuania’s prosecutor general Nida Grunskiene on Tuesday said that there were an unspecified number of people detained in several countries, offering no elaboration. The events come as Western officials say
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done