Pyongyang resounded with martial rhetoric on Sunday, a day before the 56th anniversary of the signing of the armistice. Vice Marshal Kim Yong-chun, minister of the People's Armed Forces, said North Korea continued to "confront the imperialists" through more than half a century since the end of the Korean War.He claimed South Korea, the U.S. and Japan created "a touch-and-go situation, where nobody knows when a war could break out" with "a racket of sanctions and machinations for military provocations," according to the official KCNA news agency.
According to government data obtained by the Chosun Ilbo, North Korea committed 262 major violations of the armistice agreement since it was signed in 1953 until June this year. "It is North Korea that has caused the crisis on the Korean Peninsula by carrying out armed provocations on the ground, and in the sea and air," a government official said. The North committed 115 violations on the ground, 125 in the sea, and 22 in the air. The busiest years were the 1960s with 82, declining to 32 in the 1970s and 21 in the 1980s. Then they increased again to 42 in the 1990s and 72 in the 2000s.
The North has been calling for a proper peace agreement premised on the withdrawal of the U.S. forces from South Korea since the Geneva Conference in June 1954, the year after the armistice agreement.
Prof. Nam Joo-hong of Kyonggi University said, "Until the early 1980s, North Korea planned to launch an armed invasion of South Korea if the U.S. forces withdrew from the South. But since the latter part of the 1980s when communism in the Soviet Union collapsed, the North has been calling for a peace agreement to prevent a South-led unification and protect the regime."