North Korea’s Supreme People’s Assembly voted to cancel all agreements with South Korea on promoting economic co-operation, local media reported on Thursday.
The assembly also voted to cancel laws regulating economic ties with Seoul, including a special law on a tourism project on the Mount Kumgang. The mountain tours north of the eastern border were a symbol of economic co-operation between the two Koreas in the early 2000s and attracted nearly 2 million South Korean visitors.
The project was suspended in 2008 after a South Korean tourist who wandered into the restricted area was shot dead by North Korean guards.
South Korea’s Unification Ministry stated that North Korea’s action was not unexpected and would only exacerbate its isolation. Seoul does not recognise the unilateral move, the official added.
North Korea claimed it viewed the South as an enemy at war and last year abandoned a military pact signed in 2018. The document was aimed at de-escalating tensions near the military border and was concluded as part of the truce that ended the 1950-53 Korean War.
On Wednesday, South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol called Pyongyang’s shift in inter-Korean policy “an extraordinary change,” saying the motives behind the move were not clear.
What hasn’t changed is that the North has tried for more than 70 years to turn us into communists, and while doing that, it realised its conventional weapons were insufficient so they went onto nuclear development to threaten us.
Yoon stated that he remained open to engaging with the North, even by holding a summit with Kim Jong Un, and providing aid if it would help its economy, but argued that North Korea’s leadership “is not a rational group.”
