North Korea today responded to South Korean unilateral sanctions by firing short-range ballistic missiles into the sea in a show of defiance and vowing to "liquidate" all remaining South Korean assets at former cooperative projects in the North.
The moves are the latest in an escalating standoff between the Koreas that began in January when North Korea detonated what it said was an "H-bomb of justice," its fourth nuclear test. Since then, Pyongyang has launched a long-range rocket; Seoul has shut down the last remaining cooperative project between the rivals, a jointly run factory park in the North Korean border town of Kaesong, and slapped sanctions on the North over its recent nuclear test and rocket launch; the UN has imposed sanctions; and the North has threatened nuclear strikes on Seoul and the US mainland.
The missile firing Thursday comes a day after the North released photos of leader Kim Jong Un standing beside what appears to be a nuclear warhead mock-up.
The North's Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea said today
that Pyongyang will "liquidate" South Korean assets at the closed
Kaesong factory park and the scrapped tourism resort at Diamond Mountain, both
of which are in North Korea.
In a continuation of bellicose rhetoric that has
spiked in recent weeks, the statement said North Korea will also take a series
of unspecified steps to impose "lethal" military, political and
economic blows on the South Korean government to accelerate its "pitiable
demise."