North Korea has urged foreigners in South Korea to leave the country to ensure their safety in the case of war, as tensions escalate on the Korean peninsula.
“We do not wish harm on foreigners in South Korea should there be a war,” the official KCNA news agency quoted Pyongyang as saying on Tuesday.
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“Foreign institutions, companies and tourists in Seoul and other parts of the country should set up plans to take shelter and devise a way to evacuate,” KCNA said.
The US could intercept a North Korean ballistic missile, the US commander in the Pacific said on Tuesday, but the Pyongyang regime was still a “clear and direct threat to the US”.
Admiral Samuel Locklear, speaking at a congressional hearing in Washington, said that the relationship between the west and North Korea was as bad as it had been since the Korean war.
North Korea has made a string of bellicose statements in recent weeks as the US and South Korea have conducted planned military exercises. Relations with Pyongyang have rapidly deteriorated since the UN imposed sanctions on North Korea after the Communist state conducted a third nuclear test in February.
“The US and warmongers in Seoul are in the process of amassing weapons of mass destruction in the South and waiting for the opportunity to strike,” North Korea said on Tuesday.
Some analysts say Pyongyang wants to manufacture a crisis to get concessions from the US and South Korea – repeating a pattern that once prompted Robert Gates, the former Pentagon boss, to say the US did not want to “buy the same horse twice”. In a sign that South Korea is becoming increasingly frustrated, President Park Geun-hye appeared to take a similar line on Tuesday.
“When [Pyongyang] creates tension, we give them compromise and aid. How long should we repeat this vicious cycle?” she said.
While the world watches to see what Kim Jong-eun, the North Korean leader, does next, South Koreans remain nonchalant about the escalating tensions.
“I don’t worry about them because they’ve always threatened us that they will initiate war, but they have not. So I don’t believe them,” said Yoon Doo-hyun, who runs a small accessory shop in downtown Seoul.
Oh Yoon-min, who runs a small recycling business in Seoul, said he was not even aware that North Korea had urged foreigners to leave South Korea. “I am just too busy every day to make a living, so I don’t have time to pay attention to such threats,” he said.
The South Korean foreign ministry said no embassies in Seoul have advised their staff to leave despite the latest warning from Pyongyang. Japan Airlines and All Nippon Airways, the two major Japanese carriers, said they had no plans to cancel flights to South Korea. Seoul’s Incheon airport said no flights have been redirected in response to the North Korean rhetoric.
The South Korean defence ministry said it was ready to counter any provocations from the North. But it said there were no signs of North Korea preparing its 1.2m-strong army for war. Korean government officials said the possibility of all-out war was still low although North Korea may provoke some small-scale military conflicts.
Ban Ki-Moon, the UN secretary-general, said on Tuesday tensions on the Korean peninsula risked slipping out of control.
“The current level of tension is very dangerous. A small incident caused by miscalculation or misjudgment may create an uncontrollable situation,” he told reporters in Rome, where he met Italian President Giorgio Napolitano and Pope Francis.
In recent weeks, Pyongyang has nullified the armistice reached with Seoul at the end of the war and threatened to turn Seoul and Washington into a “sea of fire”.
Last week, Pyongyang advised foreign embassies to consider evacuating staff from the capital by Wednesday – ahead of the April 15 anniversary of the birth of North Korea’s founder Kim Il-sung – warning that it could not protect them in case of war.
South Korean officials believe Pyongyang may fire a mid-range missile this week to mark the anniversary, which is usually celebrated with military demonstrations.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Japan would closely consult its allies in preparation for a possible missile launch by North Korea. Meanwhile, China on Tuesday said it did not want to see chaos on the Korean peninsula.
On Tuesday, North Korea followed through on a threat to close the Kaesong industrial park that it operates jointly with South Korea. North Korean workers did not show up for work at the business zone.
“I am not concerned about North Korea at all,” said Kim Joon-chul, a salaried worker in Seoul. “I just don’t think that they will provoke war . . . The recent threats are not something new to us although foreigners could be surprised.”
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