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North Korean defectors launch propaganda balloons over the inter-Korean border toward North Korea. (Yonhap News)

Pyongyang announced plans to abolish the Inter-Korean Joint Liaison Office in Kaesong in another statement on June 5 denouncing the distribution of leaflets in North Korea by defector groups.

In a statement that day credited to a spokesperson, the United Front Department said that Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK) First Vice Department Director Kim Yo-jong had given “instructions [on June 5] to the field in charge of the affairs with South Korea to start examination for the technical implementation of the content mentioned in the statement.”

“As the first thing, we will definitely withdraw the idling inter-Korean joint liaison office housed in the Kaesong Industrial Zone to be followed by effectuation of various measures which we had already implied,” the statement continued. The Inter-Korean Joint Liaison Office was established as a permanent channel for inter-Korean dialogue following the Panmunjom Declaration of April 2018, but operations there have effectively been suspended since the breakdown of a North Korea-US summit in Hanoi the following February.

In a previous message on June 4, Kim warned that if the South Korean government did not take action on the distribution of leaflets in South Korea, it would need to be prepared for measures including the discontinuation of tourism at Mt. Kumkang, Pyongyang’s total withdrawal of the Kaesong Industrial Complex and Inter-Korean Joint Liaison Office, and the scrapping of the two sides’ Comprehensive Military Agreement. The reference to the measure as the “first thing” in the statement was read as leaving open the possibility of future follow-up actions being adopted as well, depending on how Seoul responds.

The statement went on to state, “[E]ven though we start things that can be annoyance to the South in the area bordering it, it will be left with no words until the bill [punishing the distribution of leaflets] is adopted and put into effect.”

“We are about to start the work that can hurt the South side soon to make it suffer from annoyance,” it warned.

The statement further commented on South Korea’s “extraordinary” interpretation of Kim’s statement.

“Before caviling at others, they should read each word and phrase of the statement, recalling that it was a warning issued by the first vice department director looking after the affairs with South Korea,” it urged.

By Park Byong-su, senior staff writer

Please direct comments or questions to [english@hani.co.kr]

Caption: North Korean defectors launch propaganda balloons over the inter-Korean border toward North Korea. (Yonhap News)