North Korea has cut off a Red Cross hotline with South Korea as it escalates its war of words against Seoul and Washington in response to a military drill in the South and U.N. sanctions imposed for its recent nuclear test.
The North had
threatened to cut off the hotline on March 11 if the United States and
South Korea did not abandon their joint military exercise.
The Red Cross hotline is used to communicate between Seoul and Pyongyang which do not have diplomatic relations.
"We called at 9 a.m. and there was no response," a
government official from South Korea said. The line is tested each day.
Pyongyang has also threatened to cut off a hotline with
U.N. forces in South Korea, at the border "truce village" of Pammunjom.
Tensions on the Korean peninsula have risen since the North conducted a third nuclear test on February 12, prompting new U.N. sanctions.
South Korea and
U.S. forces are conducting large-scale military drills until the end of
April, while the North is also gearing up for a massive state-wide military exercise.
North Korea has accused the United States
of using the military drills in South Korea as a launch pad for a
nuclear war and has threatened to scrap the armistice with Washington
that ended hostilities in the 1950-53 Korean War.
The North has threatened a nuclear strike on the United
States, but such a threat has been dismissed as rhetoric by analysts,
as the North does not have the military capacity to reach the United
States.
The North is viewed
as more likely to stage some kind of attack along a disputed sea
border, if it does anything at all, rather than risk a war with South
Korea and the United States, which it would lose, according to most
military assessments.
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