South Korea blames North for DMZ mine explosion

South Korea has resume propoganda broadcasts across its border with the North, in retaliation for an alleged land mine attack.

Cross-border tensions are expected to escalate since Seoul today vowed to retaliate after blaming North Korea for planting landmines that maimed two soldiers on border patrol.

North Korea’s State News Agency, KCNA, reported last Thursday that the country will create its new time zone by resetting their current time back by 30 minutes.

Kim Min Seok, a spokesman for the South Korea defence ministry, said: “We are strengthening defence postures (along the border) against another potential provocation by the North”.

The loudspeakers had broadcast messages extolling the virtues of South Korea for years before the practice was discontinued by mutual agreement in 2004 during a period of rapprochement between the two Koreas. It was unclear how long the broadcasts will continue.

Tension has flared in the past around sensitive points on the two countries’ de facto border, including North Korea’s shelling of an island in 2010 that killed two South Korean marines.

The mine incident comes ahead of next week’s start of U.S.-South Korea summer military exercises.

The news conference was arranged as Seoul’s Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se stepped up diplomacy during the Asean forums to bring global attention to the problem of North Korea’s possible provocations and its nuclear development.

The mines exploded August. 4 in the Seoul-controlled southern part of the heavily-fortified Demilitarized Zone (DMZ).

The North has never taken responsibility for any of its murderous provocation, and that will not change because of a polite request to come to some meeting.

The two neighbours – whose division was sealed by the 1950-1953 Korean War – technically remain at war after the conflict ended with a ceasefire instead of a peace treaty.

But South Korean civil activists have continued – much to Pyongyang’s fury – to send anti-North leaflets over the border using helium balloons.

“There has been no communication detected between the North Korean guard post and its higher division or corps”, the intelligence source said, referring to a North Korean military outpost near the detonation site which is believed to have played a role in placing the mines.

Right after pinpointing the North as the culprit on Monday, the South Korean military launched the propaganda campaign in the western border area on the same day.

North Korea’s military would find it hard to respond to a retaliatory attack by the South because all its forces are now concentrated in Pyongyang preparing for the parade, he said.