SEOUL - North Korea announced Friday it was voiding non-aggression pacts with South Korea and severing a hotline with Seoul, hours after the UN Security Council adopted tough new sanctions on Pyongyang.
The announcement ramped up tensions on the Korean peninsula that have surged since the North staged a third nuclear test last month. On Thursday, the country threatened a pre-emptive nuclear strike against the United States.
Pyongyang is no stranger to bellicose rhetoric, but the tone has reached a frenzied pitch in recent days, fuelling concerns that it might trigger a border incident, with both North and South planning major military exercises next week.
North Korea "abrogates all agreements on non-aggression reached between the North and the South", the state-run Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea (CPRK) said in a statement.
The main bilateral non-aggression pact was signed in 1991, endorsing the peaceful settlement of disputes and the prevention of accidental military clashes.
"It also notifies the South side that it will immediately cut off the North-South hotline," said the statement, which was carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.
North Korea has threatened to sever the phone link - installed in 1971 - many times, and has actually done so twice before, South Korea's Unification Ministry noted.
Pyongyang's latest announcement came hours after the UN Security Council beefed up existing sanctions on the communist state in response to its February 12 nuclear test.
The resolution adopted by the 15-member Council added new names to the UN sanctions blacklist and tightened restrictions on North Korea's financial dealings, notably its suspect "bulk cash" transfers.
Earlier resolutions gave states the right to inspect cargo suspected to contain weapons material. Those inspections will become mandatory.
The new sanctions will "bite hard", said the US ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice. "They increase North Korea's isolation and raise the cost to North Korea's leaders of defying the international community."
China wants "full implementation" of the resolution, said its UN envoy Li Baodong, while stressing that efforts must be made to bring North Korea back to negotiations and to defuse tensions.
