North Korea to Suspend Naval Hot Line With South

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea said Thursday that it was cutting off a naval hot line that was intended to prevent clashes near its disputed sea border with South Korea. Meanwhile, the South conducted a large naval drill in a show of force.

Cutting the link, established in 2004 after deadly skirmishes in 1999 and 2002, raises the chances of an armed clash in the tense waters off the western coast of the Korean Peninsula — something the North has said could happen any time, particularly now that the South has officially accused it of sinking one of its warships in March.

“We will immediately deliver a physical strike at anyone intruding across our

maritime demarcation line,” the North’s state-run news agency KCNA quoted a

senior military official as saying, referring to the North’s self-proclaimed sea border, which juts deeply into South Korean waters.

The two sides have disagreed on the line for a western sea border since the Korean War ended with a truce in 1953. The North’s warnings on Thursday came as a fleet of 10 South Korean warships, including a 3,500-ton destroyer, conducted an exercise far south of the disputed waters. Shells pounded the sea and columns of water erupted as antisubmarine depth charges exploded during the one-day exercise.

In Japan, a legislative committee forwarded to Parliament a bill that would allow

coast guard vessels to inspect North Korean freighters in international waters. The measure is expected to pass. The Japanese government is also considering ways to cut down on remittances and other shipments from members of its large North Korean community to their native country.

Following up on the North’s earlier threat to cut all remaining ties with South Korea, the North Korean military also said Thursday that it was considering blocking communications and transportation across the land border. Currently, hundreds of South Korean factory managers and engineers travel daily to and from the joint industrial park at Kaesong, a North Korean border town.

Blocking the border would cut off the complex, where 120 South Korean factories

employ 45,000 North Korean workers. So far, despite the escalating tensions, neither side has shut the complex, the last remnant of the so-called sunshine policy pursued under President Lee Myung-bak’s most recent predecessors, Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun.

This week, the South suspended most trade with the North, which has denied

involvement in the ship’s sinking. Earlier, the North had threatened to “completely block South Korean personnel and vehicles” from Kaesong if the South carried out its plan to resume its psychological warfare against the North, mainly through propaganda broadcasts across the border. The North’s military said Thursday that it would destroy the South’s loudspeakers.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/28/world/asia/28korea.html?hpw=&pagewanted=print