Explosive message from North as tension rises

North Korea blew up an inter-Korean liaison office on its side of the border yesterday after days of increasingly virulent rhetoric from Pyongyang.

The demolition came after Kim Yo Jong - sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un - said at the weekend the "useless north-south joint liaison office" would soon be seen "completely collapsed."

Operatives made good on her words when an explosion was followed by people in South Korea seeing smoke rising from a shuttered joint industrial zone just across the border in Kaesong, where the office was set up less than two years ago.

Analysts said Pyongyang may be seeking to manufacture a crisis to increase pressure on Seoul while nuclear negotiations with Washington are at a standstill.

In fact, an emergency meeting of the National Security Council was called later in Seoul.

The liaison office was opened in September 2018, just before the South's President Moon Jae In flew to Pyongyang for his third summit with Kim.

About 20 officials from each side were stationed at the office during subsequent months.

But inter-Korean relations soured following the collapse of the Hanoi summit between Kim and US President Donald Trump in February last year over sanctions relief and what the North would be willing to give up in return.

Then the office was closed in January because of the coronavirus pandemic.

And North Korea has this month been issuing vitriolic condemnations of the South over activists and defectors sending anti-Pyongyang leaflets over the border by balloon, which happens on a regular basis.

Last week Pyongyang announced it was severing all official links with Seoul.

Pyongyang's Korean Central News Agency said yesterday the liaison office's destruction was in line with "the mindset of the enraged people to surely force human scum and those who have sheltered the scum to pay dearly for their crimes."

Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul, noted: "North Korea has started a provocation cycle with stages of escalation."

He said too that "the Kim regime is signaling the United States won't have the luxury of keeping North Korea on the back burner for the remainder of the year."

Since Pyongyang condemned the leaflet launches the South's Unification Ministry has filed a complaint against two defector groups and also warned of a "thorough crackdown" against activists.

And on Monday the left-leaning Moon urged the North not to "close the window of dialogue."

The North, under multiple international sanctions over its banned weapons programs, believes it deserves to be rewarded for its moratorium on nuclear and intercontinental ballistic missile tests along with the return of jailed US citizens and the remains of soldiers killed in the 1950-1953 Korean War.