Pyongyang yesterday said that it has issued an ultimatum to Seoul that it would tear down South Korean-built hotels and other facilities at the North’s Mount Kumgang resort if the South continues to ignore its demands to come and clear them out.
The statement came weeks after North Korean leader Kim Jong-un visited the site and ordered the demolishment of South Korean properties he described as “shabby” and “unpleasant-looking” while vowing that the North would redevelop the site on its own.
For months, North Korea has expressed frustration over the South’s unwillingness to defy US-led international sanctions against the North and resume South Korean tours at the site.
The North later formally demanded that the South send personnel to Mount Kumgang at an agreed-upon date to clear out their facilities and proposed an exchange of documents to work out details.
South Korean tours to Mount Kumgang were a major symbol of cooperation between the Koreas and a valuable cash source for the North’s broken economy before the South suspended them in 2008 after a North Korean guard fatally shot a South Korean tourist.
South Korea has said that it would prioritize protecting its property rights and seek “creative solutions” to the problem based on political considerations and inter-Korean dialogue.
However, the North has so far rejected South Korean calls for face-to-face discussions or to send a delegation to inspect the site.
In yesterday’s statement, North Korea ridiculed the South over “begging us to let them stay even at a corner of the mountain” and participate in future tourism programs after halting the joint tours for more than a decade “in fear of the US.”
“On Nov. 11 we sent an ultimatum, warning that if the [South Korean] authorities persist in their useless assertion, we will take it as an abandonment of the withdrawal and take resolute measure for unilaterally pulling down the facilities. However, they have remained answerless until today,” the statement said.
“The [resort], the best in the world, which all the world people want to see saying: ‘see Mount Kumgang and then die’ is clearly neither the common property of the [North and the South], nor the place symbolic of [North-South] reconciliation and cooperation,” it said.
“We will develop Mount Kumgang to be the world-renowned tourist resort with responsibility and in our own way as its owner for the sake of the nation and posterity. There is no room for [South Korea] to find its place there,” it added.
South Korean Ministry of Unification spokesman Kim Eun-han confirmed that the North sent what it described as an “ultimatum” this week, but without issuing a specific deadline.
Seoul would continue to propose inspections and face-to-face meetings over the fate of the resort, he said.
Separately, North Korea on Thursday said that the US has proposed a resumption of stalled nuclear negotiations next month as they approach an end-of-year deadline set by Kim Jong-un for the administration of US President Donald Trump to offer an acceptable deal to salvage the talks.
In a statement released by state media, North Korean negotiator Kim Myong-gil did not clearly say whether the North would accept the supposed US offer.
North Korea has no interest in talks if they are aimed at buying time without discussing solutions, he said, adding that Pyongyang is not willing to make a deal over “matters of secondary importance,” such as possible US offers to formally declare an end to the 1950-1953 Korean War or establish a liaison office between the countries.
“If the negotiated solution of issues is possible, we are ready to meet with the US at any place and any time,” Kim Myong-gil said, calling for Washington to present a fundamental solution for discarding its “hostile policy” toward North Korea.
“If the US still seeks a sinister aim of appeasing us in a bid to pass the time limit — the end of this year — with ease as it did during the DPRK-US working-level negotiations in Sweden early in October, we have no willingness to have such negotiations,” he said, using the abbreviation of North Korea’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
North Korean state media yesterday stepped up a personal attack on former US vice president Joe Biden for slandering its leader, calling the US Democratic presidential hopeful “a rabid dog” that needed to be put down.
The Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) did not say how Biden had insulted Kim Jong-un, but Biden has been critical of Trump’s policy on North Korea, saying that he was coddling a murderous dictator.
Biden was showing signs of “the final stage of dementia” and that the “time has come for him to depart his life,” it said.
“Such a guy had the temerity to dare slander the dignity of the supreme leadership of the DPRK,” KCNA said in a commentary.
“It was the last-ditch efforts of the rabid dog expediting his death,” it said. “Rabid dogs like Baiden [sic] can hurt lots of people if they are allowed to run about. They must be beaten to death with a stick before it is too late.”
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