Seoul as the “main enemy”
North Korea cuts all land connections with South Korea
October 9, 2024, 7:56 a.m
North Korea, which is already largely isolated, is further isolating itself: Pyongyang announces that it will cut off the remaining transport connections to its southern neighbor. The Kim regime justifies this with security considerations.
North Korea wants to cut off all road and rail connections to South Korea. In addition, the areas on the North Korean side are to be fortified with “strong defensive structures,” the state news agency KCNA quoted the North Korean General Staff as saying. The measures should therefore begin with immediate effect. The justification for the steps is to protect national security and prevent war.
According to the South Korean military, North Korea has already laid tens of thousands of landmines along the border area in recent months. The sealing of the already few road and rail connections is primarily a symbolic measure by North Korea, as there has been no direct exchange between the two states across their militarily highly armed national border for several years.
However, this was not always the case: During the rapprochement policy between the two Koreas around the turn of the millennium, North Korea opened the Kaesong special economic zone along the border region, in which South Korean factory owners and North Korean workers produced textiles, among other things. To the east of the border, North Korea also allowed several thousand South Korean visitors to the tourist region along the Diamond Mountains (Korean: “Keumgangsan”).
However, the rhetoric has now changed significantly. At the end of 2023, North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un described inter-Korean relations as those between two warring states at a meeting of the ruling Workers’ Party. He had also demanded that South Korea be designated as the main enemy in the country’s socialist constitution.