North Korea may quit 1953 armistice
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North Korea threatened today to abandon the 1953 armistice that ended the Korean War, accusing the United States of plotting a naval blockade as a prelude to an attack over the communist state's nuclear program.
"The situation on the Korean Peninsula is getting extremely tense" because the United States is planning to send reinforcements in a standoff over the North's nuclear activities, said a spokesman for the North Korean army.
North Korea "will be left with no option but to take a decisive step to abandon its commitment to implement the armistice agreement ... and free itself from the binding force of all its provisions," the official said.
The 1950-53 Korean War ended with the armistice, not a peace treaty, leaving the countries technically in a state of war. A North Korean withdrawal from the armistice would greatly increase tensions and uncertainty along the world's most heavily armed border.
The threat came a day after reports that the Bush administration is developing plans for sanctions against Pyongyang that would include halting its weapons shipments and cutting off the flow of money from Koreans living in Japan.
Such money is crucial to North Korea and helps to keep its economy afloat.
It also came a day after the United States and South Korea informed North Korea that they plan to hold military exercises in South Korea next month. The U.S. military said the annual maneuvers are not related to the nuclear dispute with North Korea.
But a spokesman for the North Korean People's Army said such U.S. military moves would force his nation to abandon the cease-fire that has left the Korean Peninsula divided for 50 years.
Pyongyang has routinely denounced past joint U.S.-South Korea action as preparations for an invasion.
The spokesman said the "grave situation created by the undisguised war acts committed by the U.S. in breach of the armistice agreement compels the Korean People's Army side, its warring party, to immediately take all steps to cope with it.
"If the U.S. side continues violating and misusing the armistice agreement as it pleases, there will be no need for the (North) to remain bound to the armistice agreement uncomfortably."
North Korea's withdrawal from the armistice would theoretically leave Pyongyang free to launch assaults against South Korea. Its withdrawal also would force the United Nations to abandon its peacekeeping mission in the demilitarized zones. U.S. soldiers stationed along the tense border between the countries technically serve under U.N. Command. U.N. forces signed the original treaty with North Korea and China.
Last week, the International Atomic Energy Agency voted to ask the U.N. Security Council to explore ways to force Pyongyang to comply with an international treaty banning proliferation of nuclear weapons. North Korea recently bowed out of the treaty and booted international inspectors out of the country, saying it intends to start producing electricity from its tiny reactor at Yongbyon.
Weapons experts think the country intends to reprocess spent plutonium to develop nuclear bombs.
The North Koreans fear that the Bush administration intends to attack its regime after concluding a military campaign against Iraq, and they say that only face-to-face talks with Washington can resolve the standoff.
The country demands a nonaggression pact promising North Korea's sovereignty.
State Department officials in Washington had no immediate reaction to the North's latest threat. A U.S. official noted the Bush administration had said in the past it would not respond to threats or blackmail.
The White House says it cannot enter into talks with Pyongyang after it unilaterally abandoned its pledge not to develop nuclear weapons by secretly launching a separate program to turn highly enriched uranium into weapons-grade material.
The United States thinks Pyongyang has one or two nuclear weapons, and that it could develop a half dozen more in a matter of months.
The North Korean statement, which was carried by KCNA today, was issued by the spokesman of the North Korean military's mission to Panmunjom, the truce village along the 38th parallel where the U.S.-led U.N. Command and the North Korean military meet regularly to oversee the armistice.
Yesterday, outgoing South Korean President Kim Dae-jung said North Korea could never be allowed to maintain nuclear weapons because it would trigger a nuclear arms race across Asia.
"If North Korea has nuclear weapons, South Korea could possess such weapons ... and Japan could arm with nuclear weapons. This is what a lot of people worry about. This cannot be tolerated," Kim Dae-jung said.
Knight Ridder News Service, The Associated Press and Bloomberg News Service contributed to this report.
