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N Korea threatens to scrap Korean War armistice
Communist North Korea threatened on Tuesday to abandon its commitment to the entire 1953 Korean War armistice if sanctions such as a naval blockade are imposed on it because of its suspected nuclear weapons ambitions. War warnings and comments the United States is poised to attack the North have been almost daily fare in Pyongyang's official media since the nuclear crisis flared up late last year. Washington wants multilateral talks on the crisis.North Korea has hooted, hollered, made faces, bitten itself in the small of the back, and in general acted like it usually does... It was not immediately clear whether the latest statement, from the North's Korean People's Army (KPA) broke that pattern or was more of the same. Many people in South Korea â which has lived with the threat of a potential Northern invasion for half a century â simply ignore the rhetoric and focus on everyday concerns. It's like living next door to the nut house. Eventually you get used to the howling. "The KPA side will be left with no option but to take a decisive step to abandon its commitment to implement the Armistice Agreement as a signatory to it and free itself from the binding force of all its provisions, regarding the possible sanctions to be taken by the US side against the DPRK (North Korea)," said the North's army in a statement. "If the US side continues violating and misusing the Armistice Agreement as it pleases, there will be no need for the DPRK to remain bound to the AA uncomfortably." My interpretation of this is that the army has decided it needs a war because there's no other way of keeping NKor from going under. I hope that U.S. troops have been withdrawn by the time they work themselves up to it, though I suspect it will come in the process of that withdrawl. Quite apart from my feeling that the SKors, or at least the younger generation of Skors, are ingrates on the same order as the Frenchies, I also think that the South Korean army, unless it's changed from the time I had anything to do with it, is perfectly capable of defending the country.The U.S. is a magic feather, and we have more important things to do. It it's not, we've wasted 50 years and uncountable dollars and a lot of precious time that could have been spent drinking beer or watching television. SKor has the advantage of population (approximately twice that of the north), economy, and industrial base, and it should have the advantage of force readiness and training. Posted by: Fred Pruitt 2003-02-17 |
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