North Korea Threatens To Invade Border Area After Blowing Up De Facto Embassy

Now that the distinctive inter-Korean liaison office at Kaesong lies in ruins following Tuesday’s major escalation, North Korea is reportedly preparing to send troops into the border area where they will resume “all kinds of regular military exercises” just meters away from South Korea.

According to South Korean news agency Yonhap, North Korea’s military is reviewing plans to reenter the DMZ that was previously disarmed under an inter-Korean agreement.

“Our army is keeping a close watch on the current situation in which the north-south relations are turning worse and worse, and getting itself fully ready for providing a sure military guarantee to any external measures to be taken by the Party and government,” the General Staff of the Korean People’s Army said in a statement carried by KCNA, the Korean Central News Agency.

The North Korean military is preparing “an action plan for taking measures to make the army advance again into the zones that had been demilitarized under the north-south agreement, turn the front line into a fortress and further heighten the military vigilance against the south.”

“We will map out the military action plans for rapidly carrying out the said opinions to receive approval from the Party Central Military Commission.”

A photo of the aftermath of this morning’s attack has surfaced on Twitter, as the distinctive blue building clearly lies in ruins.

picture is out. the higher building suffered a lot of damage too. Anyway it is useless. pic.twitter.com/HNKW9bh0pS

— Taepodong (@stoa1984) June 16, 2020

Earlier, the South warned that it would meet any further North Korean aggression with “a strong response.”

Following an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council standing committee to discuss Tuesday’s attack, the Blue House delivered an unusually aggressive – according to Yonhap – warning.

“The government expresses strong regret over North Korea’s unilateral explosion of the inter-Korean liaison office building,” Kim You-geun, deputy director of Cheong Wa Dae’s national security office, told reporters after the meeting. “We sternly warn that we will strongly respond to it if North Korea takes any action that further worsens the situation.”

Though Kaesong is considered a special border region, it is, technically, in North Korea.

Personally, we don’t see how invading your own country is much of a gesture. But maybe doing some jumping jacks surrounded by an assortment of heavy artillery and tanks might.