South Korea’s ruling party threatened on Friday to annul the 2018 end-of-hostilities pact reached with Pyongyang if North Korea conducts a new nuclear test.
North Korea fired a new short-range ballistic missile early Friday.
It was the ninth launch in 20 days and was accompanied by air and artillery maneuvers along the border with South Korea, which carried out live-fire exercises on Thursday.
The artillery fire (near the border) comes after “continuous provocations over the past three weeks” and constitutes “a clear violation of the military agreement of September 19 (2018),” said Yang Kum-hee, spokesman for the Party of Popular power. (PPP) in the South Korean government.
The September 19 agreement, as the joint declaration signed in 2018 after the summit between the South Korean head of state and the North Korean leader is known, was aimed at easing hostile military activities between the two countries.
“If North Korea carries out another nuclear test, we should seriously consider giving up the joint declaration on the denuclearization of the peninsula and the September 19 agreement,” said Yang Kum-hee.
The intelligence services of South Korea and the United States maintain that the Pyongyang regime is prepared to carry out an atomic test, for the first time since 2017.
The PPP spokesman blamed the proximity policies carried out by the former South Korean government, in addition to referring to what he considered a “false show of peace” as reasons that intensified Pyongyang’s provocations, urging North Korea to cease the “hostility”.
In response to the launch in recent weeks, including a ballistic missile that flew over Japanese territory, Seoul today adopted the first unilateral measures against Pyongyang in the last five years.
The restrictions affect 15 North Korean personalities and 16 institutions linked to the country’s war development program, as well as affecting the trade in materials that could potentially be used to make weapons.
South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol has admitted calling on the United States to increase US military deployment in the region in the face of escalating tensions and signs of a new North Korean nuclear test.
Source: TSF
