North Korea Cuts Communications With South As Nuclear Tensions Rise

By Stefan J. Bos, Special Correspondent Worthy News

(Worthy News) – North Korea said Tuesday it would cut off all communications with South Korea amid rising tensions between the two neighbors.

Pyongyang severed communication lines at the inter-Korean liaison office at the border city of Kaesong, as well as military and presidential hotlines at noon local time on Tuesday, the state-run Korean Central News Agency said.

Pyongyang made a move after hundreds of thousands of leaflets criticizing North Korea’s nuclear weapons program were sent by dissidents on balloons across the border on Sunday.

The sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un called the leaflet-sending a “sordid and wicked act of hostility” committed by “human scum.”

Kim Yo Jong warned that the North would withdraw from an inter-Korean military agreement and would not restart joint economic projects if the practice was not halted.

The balloons arrived ahead of revelations that the isolated autocratically ruled state increased its nuclear weapons arsenal to dozens of warheads.

RESEARCH CENTER

The Research Center for Nuclear Weapons Abolition (RECNA) at Nagasaki University in Japan said Tuesday that North Korea might have as many as 35 nuclear warheads in its arsenal.

That is more than previous estimates said United Press International (UPI) agency.

UPI referred to top U.S. weapons expert Siegfried Hecker as cautioning that North Korea would never give the full picture of its nuclear weapons.

“A complete account of North Korea’s nuclear weapons, materials and facilities would, in [leader] Kim [Jong Un’s] view, likely be far too risky in that it would essentially provide a targeting list for U.S. military planners. And seal the inevitable end of the nuclear program and possibly his regime”. Hecker wrote in an assessment.

North Korean leader Kim has previously proposed dismantling the Yongbyon nuclear complex in exchange for sanctions relief from the United States.

GLOBAL CONCERNS 

Its weapons are included in a global total of 13,410 nuclear weapons, Japanese news agency Kyodo News reported Tuesday.

The nuclear extension comes amid international concerns about the thinking of the North Korean leader who rules the impoverished nation with an iron fist.

Rights watchers and U.S. officials believe that at least hundreds of thousands of people are languishing away in brutal prison camps.

Among them are many Christians and others seen as dangerous to North Korea’s leadership and its non-Christian ideology, according to defectors and rights groups.

North Korea has denied such camps even exist.

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