Kim Jong-Un orders troops onto war footing

North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un has ordered his frontline troops on to a war footing from Friday, as military tensions with South Korea soared following a rare exchange of artillery shells across their heavily fortified border.

North Korea is increasing its border security and installing barbed-wire fences.

The US Department of Defense said it was monitoring the Korean Peninsula closely and the UN said it was following tensions “with serious concern”. It launched a 3G cellular network in 2009 that has gone on to attract around 2.5 million subscriptions – about 10 percent of North Korea’s population.

The defence ministry dismissed the threat from the North and said the broadcasts would continue. “These actions correlate with the pattern of inter-Korean relations prior to the start of the military exercises, which had been trending negatively following the land mine blast”.

Seoul and Pyongyang signed a ceasefire after the 1950-1953 Korean War, but the countries formally remain in a state of war. Last year, their ships exchanged warning fire near a disputed Yellow Sea boundary.

North Korean Central Televsion said: ‘Commanders of the Korean People’s Army were hastily dispatched to the front-line troops to command military operations to destroy psychological warfare tools if the enemy does not stop the propaganda broadcast within 48 hours and prepare against the enemy’s possible counteractions’.

The engineer, who worked in North Korea from 2011 to late 2013, said the network was built this way because sanctions prevented the export of encryption technology to North Korea.

Children are covered with blankets as they are evacuated in front of a shelter near the demilitarised zone separating the two Koreas in Yeoncheon, South Korea.

North Korea operations a massive cult of personality around Kim Jong Un and his family and reacts bitterly to any outside propaganda that derogates the leader.