Stern warnings flew back and forth across the border between North Korea and South Korea on Friday, the day before a North-imposed deadline for the South to shut off propaganda broadcasts or face war.
Kim Jong Un, the supreme commander of the North Korean military, ordered front-line units along the heavily fortified frontier to move to a war footing Friday evening, state media reported.
His nuclear-armed regime, known for being both thin-skinned and fond of saber rattling, has warned South Korea it faces military action if it doesn’t turn off the propaganda loudspeakers by Saturday evening.
“The situation of the country is now inching closer to the brink of war,” Ji Jae Ryong, North Korean ambassador to China, told journalists in Beijing on Friday. He blamed South Korea for the situation.
That doesn’t necessarily mean war really is imminent: North Korea has used similar language in the past without hostilities breaking out. But South Korean Defense Minister Han Min-koo said Friday that North Korea was pushing the tensions “to the utmost level.”
“North Korea’s offensive action is a despicable crime that breaks a ceasefire agreement and the non-aggression treaty between North and South,” Han said in an address broadcast on South Korean television.
“If North Korea continues on provoking, our military — as we have already warned — will respond sternly, and end the evil provocations of North Korea,” he said, adding the country is working closely with the United States.
As the verbal sniping continued, the South’s President, Park Geun-hye, visited troops at a base south of Seoul, receiving a briefing from military officials on the latest situation, her office said.
Tensions on the Korean Peninsula have been escalating since two South Korean soldiers were seriously wounded by landmines August 4 in the Demilitarized Zone.
South Korea and the U.S.-led U.N. Command in Korea concluded North Korea planted the mines on a patrol route in the southern part of the zone.
North Korea has denied responsibility and refused South Korean demands for an apology.
Seoul’s response was to resume cross-border propaganda broadcasts last week for the first time in more than a decade, a move virtually guaranteed to anger the regime in Pyongyang.
Sure enough, North Korea announced last weekend that the broadcasts were a declaration of war and threatened to blow up the loudspeakers.
On Thursday, South Korean officials said the North fired artillery shells over the Demilitarized Zone that separates the two countries. The South fired back several dozen shells of its own, according to the Defense Ministry.
No casualties were reported by either side.
South Korean officials said some residents of the area targeted by North Korea on Thursday had to be evacuated, although many have since returned.
A U.S. official told CNN that North Korea was believed to be targeting a loudspeaker position.
History of disputes
It’s not the first time that the two sides have briefly traded blows in recent years. They notably exchanged artillery fire over their disputed maritime border in 2010 and machine-gun fire over land in October.
But Thursday’s clash was unusual because of the type of weapons used around the Demilitarized Zone, said Alison Evans, a senior analyst at IHS Country Risk.
“Cross-border attacks have mainly involved small-arms fire or, as in October 2014, anti-aircraft heavy machine guns,” she said. “In contrast, there have been frequent exchanges of artillery and rocket fire across the Northern Limit Line (NLL), the de facto maritime border.”
Amid the heightened tensions, North Korea’s connection to the global Internet went down twice Friday, according to Dyn Research, a U.S-based private Internet-monitoring service. North Korea’s Internet access last went down August 10 for 4 ½ hours, according to Dyn Research. The cause of the disruption was not immediately clear.
Is situation likely to escalate?
The question now is whether the situation will escalate further.
North Korea has used similarly alarming language in previous periods of high tension
In 2013, the country announced it had entered “a state of war” with South Korea. That situation didn’t result in military action, although North Korea did temporarily shut down the two countries’ joint industrial zone, which lies on its side of the border.
During that period, North Korea kept up a barrage of bombastic threats against the United States, South Korea and Japan. But at the same time, it continued accepting tourists and hosting international athletes in Pyongyang for a marathon.
South Korea said Friday that it was limiting the number of its citizens entering the joint industrial zone, but the complex was still operating. There are currently 83 South Koreans in Pyongyang attending a youth soccer event, including players and coaches, according to the South Korean Unification Ministry.
Jamie Metzl, an Asia expert for the Atlantic Council in New York, said he thought it was unlikely that the current crisis would escalate further.
“North Korea has more to gain from conflict theater than from a conflict that would quickly expose its fundamental weakness,” he said, suggesting leaders in Pyongyang might be trying to “make trouble because they feel ignored by the international community and feel they have something to gain negotiating their way out of a mini-crisis.”
But other analysts said the situation could still continue to deteriorate.
The shelling Thursday “raises questions frankly about Kim Jong Un’s style of making tension, provocations, escalation — and whether he knows how to control escalation,” said Michael Green, an Asia specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
U.S., China, urge calm
A spokeswoman for China’s Foreign Ministry said Friday that the country is “paying great attention to the situation” and is “willing to work with all parties toward the peace and stability of the peninsula.”
“We urge relevant parties to remain calm and restrained, use meetings and dialogue to properly handle the current situation, and stop any action that could escalate the tensions,” spokeswoman Hua Chunying said.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is “deeply concerned” about the situation, spokesman Eri Kaneko said.
The United States, which has roughly 28,000 troops stationed in South Korea, said it, too, is closely monitoring the situation.
“As we’ve said before, these kinds of provocative actions only heighten tensions,” State Department spokesman John Kirby said Thursday, referring to the North Korean shelling. “And we call on Pyongyang to refrain from actions and rhetoric that threaten regional peace and security.”
He said that Washington and Seoul are coordinating closely and that the United States “remains steadfast in its commitment to the defense, the security of the peninsula, to our alliance with South Korea.”
North Korea has also expressed anger recently over previously planned joint military exercises this week involving tens of thousands of U.S. and South Korean troops.
Pyongyang has said it views such drills as a prelude to an invasion. Seoul and Washington have repeatedly dismissed North Korean requests to call off joint exercises in recent years.