North Korea to close its border with South

Relations have been frosty since South Korea’s new president took office.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea’s powerful military announced Wednesday it will shut the country’s border with the South on Dec. 1 — a marked escalation of threats against Seoul’s new conservative government at a time of heightened tension on the peninsula.

The military’s chief delegate to inter-Korean talks informed his South Korean counterpart that the North will “restrict and cut off” cross-border routes next month, the state-run Korean Central News Agency said.

Analysts called it a pointed political move designed to humiliate Seoul by hobbling a joint industrial park in the city of Kaesong, just across the border, that has served as a beacon of hope for reconciliation.

Relations between the two Koreas — separated by troops, tanks and one of the world’s most heavily armed borders since a three-year war that ended in a truce in 1953 — have been frosty since South Korea’s President Lee Myung-bak took office in February.

Lee pledged to be tough with communist North Korea, an abrupt departure from his liberal predecessors’ decadelong policy of fostering reconciliation with aid and other concessions.

Pyongyang reacted by cutting off diplomatic ties with Seoul. Ties deteriorated further in July when a North Korean soldier fatally shot a South Korean tourist visiting Diamond Mountain, with Seoul banning tours to the jointly operated resort in the North.

After months without contact, the North’s military summoned South Korea to the border for talks last month, only to berate Seoul over anti-Pyongyang leaflets that continue to flutter over the border in helium-fueled balloons.

The two Koreas had agreed in 2004 to end propaganda warfare across the border, but the South says it cannot prohibit activists from dispatching the leaflets, citing freedom of speech.

Wednesday’s warning — the North’s most concrete, calculated threat yet — amounts to an ultimatum to the Lee administration to acknowledge that it must abide by past agreements, analysts said.

“This is a critical juncture in their estimation that they have to take some action,” said Paik Hak-soon of South Korea’s Sejong Institute.