adminMilitary tensions on the Korean peninsula have risen to their highest level for years, with the communist state under the youthful Kim threatening nuclear war in response to UN sanctions imposed after its third atomic test last month. It has also announced its unilateral shredding of the 60-year-old Korean War armistice and non-aggression pacts with Seoul in protest at a joint South Korean-US military exercise that began Monday.
While most of these statements have been dismissed as rhetorical bluster, the latest threat to the border island of Baengnyeong, which has around 5,000 civilian residents, appears credible and carries the weight of precedent. In 2010, the South Korean naval vessel Cheonan was sunk in the area of Baengnyeong with the loss of 46 lives, and later that year North Korea shelled the nearby island of Yeonpyeong, killing four people.
On a visit Monday to frontline artillery units, Kim Jong-Un briefed officers on their mission “to strike and wipe out the enemies” on Baengnyeong and turn the island into a “sea of fire”. “Once an order is issued, you should break the waists of the crazy enemies, totally cut their wind-pipes and thus clearly show them what a real war is like,” Kim was quoted as saying by the Korean Central News Agency. An administrative official on Baengnyeong, Kim Young-Gu, said civilian emergency shelters on the island had been fully stocked. – AFP.
Online Reporter