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| Daily News Brief March 27, 2013 |
Top of the Agenda: North Korea Cuts Military Hotline Amid More War Threats
North
Korea said Wednesday it will cut a military hotline with South Korea,
warning that war could break out at "any moment." Analysts say the move,
which severs a hotline that guarantees safety (Yonhap)
of South Korean personnel, could affect the operation of the
inter-Korean industrial complex in the North's border town of Kaesong.
The threat marks the latest in a series from North Korea in the wake of
new UN sanctions imposed after its third nuclear test in February. After
disconnecting the inter-Korean Red Cross hotline earlier this month,
Pyongyang announced Tuesday that it had ordered artillery and rocket
units into "combat posture" (BBC) targeting U.S. bases in Hawaii, Guam, and the mainland.
Analysis
"The
phone lines they turned off today are used to control the border
traffic and avoid flares that might involve the military. The last time
the North cut this particular hotline,
in 2009, 80 South Korean workers were left stranded above the border
for a more than a day. The Kaesong factories are the last serious form
of cooperation between the two countries," writes Dashiell Bennett for
the Atlantic Wire.
"Stability has held for 60 years because the U.S. security alliances
with South Korea and Japan make it clear to the North Korean leadership
that if they attacked South Korea or Japan, they would lose both the
war and their country. And, for half a century, neither side believed
that the benefits of starting a major war outweighed the costs. The
worry is that the new North Korean leader might not hold to the same
logic, given his youth and inexperience," write David Kang and Victor
Cha for Foreign Policy.
"When it comes to actions welcomed by the United States and its allies, taking Pyongyang at its word is nearly impossible.
Twenty years of nuclear diplomacy is littered with broken pledges,
dashed deals and a small but growing North Korean nuclear arsenal,"
writes Paul Eckert for Reuters.
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