Pyongyang Means What It Says

A hair-trigger situation has been created on the Korean peninsula, which could lead to an outbreak of war at any moment.

On August 4 a mine exploded for some unknown reason near an MP post in the south of the Demilitarized Zone along the Military Demarcation Line, which divides the peninsula into north and south. The south Korean authorities, in collusion with the United States, lost no time in clamouring about the north’s involvement in the incident, claiming that the soldiers from the north had trespassed on their territory to lay the mine. Then they ordered the anti-north broadcasting for psychological warfare to be resumed throughout the frontline.

It is remindful of the raid on the broadcasting station at Gorlitz 76 years previously, when Hitler started the Second World War by declaring to the world that the Polish army had intruded into the German territory and committed a “provocation.”

Psychological warfare is in effect an act of war.

Pyongyang did not tolerate it. The General Staff of the Korean People’s Army issued a 48- hour ultimatum on August 20 that if the south Korean defence ministry does not stop the resumed anti-north propaganda and withdraw all the means of psychological warfare, it will immediately launch tough military actions.

Notwithstanding this, the south Korean defence ministry fabricated another incident on the afternoon of August 20. The south Korean army fired 36 rounds of artillery shells on the posts of the KPA on the absurd pretext that the KPA fired one southward. The outrage it perpetrated without identifying the source of firing, point of impact of the fired shell and its type, when viewed by people with reason, was indeed hysteric. It seems that Pyongyang is determined to punish the provokers severely, the way a man controls a mad dog with a stick. To cope with the grave situation, the Central Military Commission of the Workers’ Party of Korea convened an emergency enlarged meeting on the night of August 20.

The meeting listened to the report from the General Bureau of Reconnaissance of the KPA General Staff on the circumstances and truth of the military provocations that occurred on the afternoon of August 20 on the mid-western sector of the front as well as the overall enemy movements. It discussed political and military countermeasures to frustrate the enemy’s war moves.

It examined and ratified the KPA Front Command’s offensive operational plan, which is designed to launch an immediate counterstrike and counteroffensive across the front in times of emergency. Supreme Commander Kim Jong Un of the KPA ordered the large combined units on the front to get into a war state at 17:00 on August 21, armed so fully that they could start operations at any moment, and declared a semi-war state in the frontline areas. Commanding officers, who will command the local military operations to destroy the enemy’s means of psychological warfare if he does not stop the broadcasting for the smear campaign in 48 hours and to put down the enemy’s possible reactions, were appointed and dispatched to the front without delay.

Pyongyang has never pardoned provokers. The Pueblo, a US armed spy ship which had been intruding into the territorial waters of other countries experiencing no trouble, was captured in January 1968 as soon as it had intruded into the territorial waters of north Korea. The United States clamoured about “retaliation” for this, and Pyongyang offered a resolute response, saying it would answer the US “retaliation” with its own retaliation and the US “all-out war” with its own all-out war. Disheartened, the United States could not but submit a written apology, the first of its kind in the US history. The north Korean soldiers mercilessly shot down the US large spy plane EC-121 in April 1969, when it had intruded into the territorial airspace of their country.

In August 1976, they killed at a stroke some US officers who had been pouncing upon them wielding axes at Panmunjom situated along the Military Demarcation Line. In December 1994, they shot down at a single shot a US helicopter when it had intruded into the territorial airspace of north Korea.

In November 2010, when the south Korean military, egged on by the United States, committed such a provocative act as firing shells towards the territorial waters of north Korea, north Korean guns turned Yonphyong Island, the base of the provokers, into a lake of fire. North Korea, already possessed of invincible armed forces, has now a nuclear deterrent so as to tame the United States which is behaving arrogantly on this planet wielding nuclear weapons. Everyone should know that north Korea values its sovereignty and self-respect most and has the will and capability to punish and annihilate without mercy those who dare provoke it, wherever they may be on this planet.

The south Korean authorities, which persist in provoking north Korea, and the United States, which eggs them on, would be well advised not to behave rashly. Pyongyang has already warned that only death is waiting for the provokers. Pyongyang means what it says