Friday, August 21, 2015
Associated Press
PYONGYANG, North Korea
North Korea declared today its frontline troops are in a “a quasi-state of war” and warned of military operations a day after the rival Koreas exchanged fire across the world’s most heavily armed border.
The North has made similar bombastic claims before, and the huge numbers of soldiers and military equipment stationed along the Koreas’ tense border mean the area is always essentially in a “quasi-state of war.” Still, the declaration, after South Korea’s firing of dozens of shells across the border after the North lobbed several rounds at a South Korean town, signals a worrying development.
The North’s official Korean Central News Agency reported today that leader Kim Jong Un ordered at an emergency military meeting that his troops “be fully ready for any military operations at any time from 5 p.m. Friday.”
The report said that “military commanders were urgently dispatched for operations to attack South Korean psychological warfare facilities if the South doesn’t stop operating them.”
Seoul said the North fired Thursday across the Demilitarized Zone to back up an earlier threat to attack South Korean border loudspeakers that, after a lull of 11 years, have started broadcasting anti-Pyongyang propaganda. North Korea, which denies firing at the South, later said the South Korean shells landed near four military posts but caused no injuries. No one was reported injured in the South, either, though hundreds were evacuated from frontline towns.