Quote from Associated Press :

NKorea severs all ties with rival SKorea

By HYUNG-JIN KIM
Associated Press Writer

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- North Korea declared Tuesday that it would sever all communication and relations with Seoul as punishment for blaming the North for the sinking of a South Korean warship two months ago.

North Korea also announced it would expel all South Korean government officials working at a joint industrial park in the northern border town of Kaesong, the official Korean Central News Agency said in a dispatch monitored in Seoul late Tuesday.

Tensions were rising on the divided Korean peninsula in the wake of an investigation report blaming North Korea for a torpedo attack that sank the Cheonan warship on March 26, killing 46 South Korean sailors.

South Korea's military restarted psychological warfare operations - including blaring radio broadcasts into the North and placing loudspeakers at the border to blast out propaganda - to punish the North for the provocation. The South is also slashing trade and denying permission to North Korean cargo ships to pass through South Korean waters.

North Korea struck back by declaring it would cut all ties with the South until President Lee Myung-bak leaves office in early 2013. South Korean ships and airliners will be banned from passing through its territory and the North will start "all-out counterattacks" against the South's psychological warfare, the North's Committee for the Peaceful Reunification said in a statement carried by KCNA.

The North's committee called the moves "the first phase" of punitive measures against South Korea, suggesting more action could follow.

South Korea's Unification Ministry said it had no immediate comment on the North Korean statement. However, spokeswoman Lee Jong-joo noted the statement referred only to eight South Korean officials staying at the Kaesong complex, not some 800 South Korean company managers and workers.

Yonhap news agency said that suggested the North had no intention of completely shutting down the Kaesong park, as South Korea also decided to keep the complex intact.

Earlier, one Seoul-based monitoring agency reported that North Korea's leader ordered its 1.2 million-member military to get ready for combat. South Korean officials could not immediately confirm the report.

The North flatly denies involvement in the sinking of the Cheonan, one of the South's worst military disasters since the 1950-53 Korean War ended with an armistice, and has warned that retaliation would mean war. It has threatened to destroy any propaganda facilities installed at the heavily militarized border.

A team of international investigators, however, concluded last week that a torpedo from a North Korean submarine tore apart the Cheonan.

North Korea is already subject to various U.N.-backed sanctions following earlier nuclear and missile tests, and the steps announced by Seoul were seen as among the strongest it could take short of military action.

The U.S. has thrown its full support behind South Korea's moves and they are planning two major military exercises off the Korean peninsula in a display of force intended to deter future aggression by North Korea, the White House said. The U.S. has 28,500 troops in South Korea.

South Korea also wants to bring North Korea before the U.N. Security Council over the sinking. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Monday he expects the council to take action against North Korea, but China - North Korea's main ally and a veto-wielding council member - has so far done little but urge calm on all sides.

In Beijing, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said she had "very productive and very detailed" discussions with Chinese officials but could not say if any progress had been made in convincing the Chinese to back U.N. action.

"No one is more concerned about peace and stability in this region as the Chinese," she told reporters. "We know this is a shared responsibility, and in the days ahead we will work with the international community and our Chinese colleagues to fashion an effective, appropriate response."

Chinese State Counselor Dai Bingguo, speaking at a news conference with Clinton, called for "relevant parties" to "calmly and properly handle the issue and avoid escalation of tension."

As part of its propaganda offensive, South Korea's military resumed radio broadcasts airing Western music, news and comparisons between the South and North Korean political and economic situation late Monday, according to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The military also planned to launch propaganda leaflets by balloon and other methods on Tuesday night to inform North Koreans about the ship sinking.

In coming weeks, South Korea also will install dozens of loudspeakers and towering electronic billboards along the heavily armed land border to send messages urging communist soldiers to defect to the South.

On Tuesday, North Korean state media cited the powerful National Defense Commission as saying the North's soldiers and reservists were bracing to launch a "sacred war" against South Korea.

The North's military also claimed Tuesday that dozens of South Korean navy ships violated the countries' disputed western sea border earlier this month and threatened to take "practical" military measures in response.

North Korea often issues fiery rhetoric and regularly vows to wage war against South Korea and the U.S. It put its army on high alert following a November sea battle with South Korea near where the Cheonan went down in March. The Koreas also fought bloody maritime skirmishes in the disputed area in 1999 and 2002.

Seoul-based North Korea Intellectuals Solidarity said Tuesday that North Korean leader Kim Jong Il last week ordered his military to get ready for combat.

The group, citing unidentified sources in North Korea, said the order was read by Gen. O Kuk Ryol, a Kim confidant, and broadcast on speakers installed in each house and at major public sites throughout the country last Thursday, hours after the multinational report blaming North Korea for the sinking was issued in Seoul.

The South Korean military said it had no indication of unusual activity by North Korea's military.

What do you guys think may happen? This seems to be the most serious of threats from the North in a long time.

Eh, all this bickering between the Korea's. Nothing too serious (ie. war) will come of this, I reckon. It's all big talk and some crap flinging, it will die down eventually. As for the US, they should make sure they clean up the mess they've made elsewhere before getting involved in yet another military conflict (should it escalate to that).

Kim Jong Il is so damn dumb leader. He can't take the consuquences of what he has done. If this situation gets any hotter I think there will be a war but not a very large one.
China and America will come between them.

Quote from Tomba(FIN) :

China and America will come between them.

China and the US would be on opposite sides in the conflict, though, with China backing North Korea (or did I read that wrong)?

Quote from obsolum :

China and the US would be on opposite sides in the conflict, though, with China backing North Korea (or did I read that wrong)?

Yeah true, but I doubt that they started a war between them so they would have to settle the situation somehow..
China has been backing up NK for quite a while.

N. Korea knows that if it goes to war it'll be completely obliterated.

From this interesting article: http://38north.org/2010/05/an- ... -politics-in-north-korea/

Quote :

So who made this fatal and risky decision? Those in the West who insist on calling Kim Jong Il the Dear Leader (although this title has not been in use in North Korea for one and a half decades), who believe that he is the personification of evil and the only person with power in his country, will argue that only he could have given the order. But this assumption collides with a truism that my students learn in their first semester: the top priority of the DPRK leadership is regime survival. An open war against the South would be suicidal.

The “cornered tiger” scenario is the only condition, beyond mental illness, under which Kim Jong Il would choose this option. One possible interpretation of the sinking of the Cheonan is that the situation in North Korea is so bad and the regime so desperate that it believes risking annihilation is its only option. But while it is hard to regard the situation in North Korea as rosy, it has been through worse times. With the currency reforms of 2009, the regime was able to win some time in its otherwise hopeless fight against the inevitable transformation of North Korea’s society when it expropriated the growing wealth from the newly emerging middle class and tried to partially demonetize the economy again. And as far as we know, prior to March 26, there was no intelligence pointing to unusual troop movements; no increase in communications that might have signaled something out of the ordinary was about to happen or signs that a change in the military’s alert status was about to take place.

N.Korea have what? 7 nuclear warhead, and very questionable amount of working missles. Half of its people is starving and once foreign aid stops in case of war they are pretty much doomed.

It's just their periodic threat to misbehave in an attempt for us to take them seriously.

China isn't actually backing up North Korea, it's just that for North Korea there's not much country who they have a democratic relationship with and can openly talk to, so China as one of the nearest neighbour and sharing a communist roots has to take a more friendly stature. If things turns sour you can garuntee China wanting no piece of the action.

Kindergarden.

Quote from zeugnimod :

Kindergarten.

Fixed

It's actually spelt exactly like in German?

Yup.

Comment from a digger in Seoul:

Quote :

*****'s getting serious here in Seoul. For the first time I have a backpack with supplies and my passport in case war breaks out.
Many Koreans are in real fear of it for the first time in their lives.

Neither side wants to back down on this. The South has proof, and the North claims it's a lie and will go to war over it. Kim Jeong Il is dying and might be looking at his last hurrah while he's still alive and the North still have the military power to go out with a bang.

Everyone time I hear someone not from here talk, I want to slap them. The North has tunnels into Seoul that could deliver tends of thousands of troops within an hour. This is not wild speculation, this is a fact. A few of the tunnels have been discovered by pure luck.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Tunnel_of_Aggression ...


***** could get scary here in the blink of an eye. It's just a matter of when, and there have been so many cries of "wolf", that no one will believe it until it's going full force.

Ain't gonna happen.

The Wikipedia article dosen't exist.

Quote from 5haz :

The Wikipedia article dosen't exist.

The link is truncated in the above quote.

i've always said "go right ahead", when it comes to north korea... they might have "allies" in china and iran and some of the other neighbouring countries, but america would just destroy north korea.

i must say i'm rather shocked about the turn of events though, i've always assumed their "all-out-war" claims were moot. maybe i was wrong.

US needs to stay the f* out of other countries.

No offense to any Americans here, but i dont like ur government and its 'quiet' way of gaining influence/power all over the world.

Quote from Fastwalker :

US needs to stay the f* out of other countries.

No offense to any Americans here, but i dont like ur government and its 'quiet' way of gaining influence/power all over the world.

lol

Quote from Fastwalker :

US needs to stay the f* out of other countries.

No offense to any Americans here, but i dont like ur government and its 'quiet' way of gaining influence/power all over the world.

The US has 28,000 troops stationed in South Korea, they have been there as a bodyguard since the end of the Korean War. Do you really want the South to be just like the North?

Quote from DeadWolfBones :

lol

Agreed.

Quote from Fastwalker :

US needs to stay the f* out of other countries.

No offense to any Americans here, but i dont like ur government and its 'quiet' way of gaining influence/power all over the world.

Well, it's not the most eloquently made argument in the history of the world but I tend to agree with the basic sentiment. The US has a clear history of manipulating countries and regimes throughout the world to further its own interests. You could argue a country has the right or even responsibility to do so, but the way it has been done has severely disadvantaged or killed many of the citizens of those countries. Installing dictators who oppress and kill their citizens but have favourable trade policies with the USA, securing supplies of natural resources by force and, perhaps more importantly, choosing to stay away from other situations where they could have intervened but it was not in their interest to do so. These are NOT the actions a superpower should be engaging in.

Yet they're actions that every superpower to date HAS engaged in, as an intrinsic part of being a superpower.

Quote from DeadWolfBones :

Yet they're actions that every superpower to date HAS engaged in, as an intrinsic part of being a superpower.

so what are you saying? there is no better way than being a kissingeresque armchair murderer?

Quote from amp88 :

The US has a clear history of manipulating countries and regimes throughout the world to further its own interests. You could argue a country has the right or even responsibility to do so, but the way it has been done has severely disadvantaged or killed many of the citizens of those countries. Installing dictators who oppress and kill their citizens but have favourable trade policies with the USA, securing supplies of natural resources by force and, perhaps more importantly, choosing to stay away from other situations where they could have intervened but it was not in their interest to do so. These are NOT the actions a superpower should be engaging in.

Thats basically what i wanted to say
but i think it would have taken me 3 hours ;D

Quote from DeadWolfBones :

Yet they're actions that every superpower to date HAS engaged in, as an intrinsic part of being a superpower.

I didn't say America was unique in this and I would have to agree that other countries have engaged in these practices too. It's just that a lot of people (a lot of them Americans) wonder why the world seems to have such a dislike or even hate for them. Foreign policy history is a good place to start, IMO. Had Korea not been divided into North and South by the USA and Russia and had separate teachings on government from those countries we may not (would not?) be in the situation we are today with such hostility between North and South. I'm not blaming the USA exclusively for this situation, of course, but America's irrational fear of Communism has surely been one of the causes of tension from the early years until now.

Quote from Fastwalker :

US needs to stay the f* out of other countries.

No offense to any Americans here, but i dont like ur government and its 'quiet' way of gaining influence/power all over the world.

Don't worry, most of us won't take offense because we also dislike our government.

Anyways, back on topic, I love reading these threads.