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US urges North Korea to avoid further ‘counterproductive’ steps

On Tuesday, North Korea blew up an inter-Korean liaison office on its side of the border, after days of increasingly virulent rhetoric from Pyongyang.

US urges North Korea to avoid further ‘counterproductive’ steps

US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un (Photo: IANS)

US on Tuesday urged North Korea to avoid further “counterproductive” steps after it blew up a liaison office on the border with the South.

State Department spokesperson said,”The United States fully supports the ROK’s efforts on inter-Korean relations and urges the DPRK to refrain from further counterproductive actions”.

On Tuesday, North Korea blew up an inter-Korean liaison office on its side of the border, after days of increasingly virulent rhetoric from Pyongyang.

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Last week it announced it was severing all official communication links with South Korea.

The leaflets — usually attached to hot air balloons or floated in bottles — criticise North Korean leader Kim Jong Un for human rights abuses and his nuclear ambitions.

On Monday, the left-leaning Moon urged the North not to “close the window of dialogue”.

Earlier Tuesday, North Korea’s army said it was “fully ready” to take action against the South, including re-entering areas that had been demilitarised under an inter-Korean agreement.

The two Koreas remain technically at war after Korean War hostilities ended with an armistice in 1953 that was never replaced with a peace treaty.

Last week,the United States had criticized North for cutting communications lines with the South and urged Pyongyang to return to the negotiating table.

The threats come with inter-Korean ties at a standstill, despite three summits between the North’s Kim Jong Un and the South’s President Moon Jae-in in 2018.

Earlier, the North had threatened to close the liaison office with the South and threatened further steps to make Seoul “suffer.”

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