SEOUL - North Korea on Monday, May 26, threatened to inflict "unimaginable disaster" on South Korea which it accused of escalating the danger of war on the Korean peninsula. Last week North Korea sparked an outcry from South Korea and caused a three-day suspension of inter-Korean economic cooperation talks by threatening to bring "unspeakable disaster" to the capitalist South. This time the threat came from North Korea's powerful Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland, a cabinet-level organization that directs relations with South Korea.
Pyongyang has turned up the volume of condemnation of South Korea since South Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun and U.S. President George W. Bush agreed at a summit in Washington on May 14 that "further steps" may be necessary to counter the North's nuclear weapons drive. In a joint statement Roh and Bush also linked long-standing economic projects between North and South Korea to Pyongyang's actions on the nuclear crisis. At North-South talks last week in Pyongyang, North Korea expressed anger at South Korea, accusing it of aligning itself with the Bush administration's hard-line policy towards Pyongyang. It also demanded an explanation from South Korea concerning those "further steps."
| Since Roh seems to be so easily intimidated, we can't discount the effects of this sort of ranting. The SKors have a lot to lose in a war... |
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