North Korea warns it could cut off contact with South over military drills with US
- North Korea’s Foreign Ministry blasts South Korea for continuing its military drills with the United States,
- It said that future dialogue will be held strictly between Pyongyang and Washington and not between the Koreas
North Korea warned Sunday that it would reject contact with the South as long as Seoul continues its joint military drill with the United States, which Pyongyang has condemned as a rehearsal for an invasion.
In a statement carried Sunday by the official Korean Central News Agency, Kwon Jong-gun, director general of the Foreign Ministry’s Department of American Affairs, said the two Koreas “now stand in an extraordinary situation”.
“Given that the military exercise clearly puts us as an enemy in its concept, they should think that an inter-Korean contact itself will be difficult,” unless they put an end to the exercise, Kwon said.
North Korea has carried out five rounds of weapons launches in just over two weeks, saying it was meant as a warning to the United States and South Korea over their ongoing joint military drill that began last Monday.
