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N. Korea warns U.S.-S. Korea military drill harms inter-Korean venture
SEOUL, March 3 (Yonhap) -- North Korea has warned South Korea not to go ahead with a military exercise with the United States planned for next week, saying it will hurt their ties and development of a joint industrial park, Pyongyang's state media reported Wednesday.
A North Korean military officer, Col. Ri Son-gwon, issued the warning during talks Tuesday with the South on ways to facilitate the industrial complex in the North Korean border city of Kaesong, according to the official Korean Central News Agency.
Tuesday's meeting ended without agreement.
Ri, the chief North Korean delegate at the talks, told the meeting that the March 8-18 exercise "will negatively affect the development of inter-Korean relations and the revitalization of the Kaesong Industrial Zone," according to the KCNA.
"The South Korean authorities are getting hell-bent on the moves to do harm to the DPRK by intentionally escalating the military tensions," he was quoted as saying. DPRK stands for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the North's official name.
South Korea and the U.S. plan to conduct their annual Key Resolve and Foal Eagle exercise beginning next Monday. The allies, which remain technically at war with North Korea after the 1950-53 Korean War ended in a truce, maintain the drill is purely defensive.
North Korea routinely claims such exercises are a precursor to a nuclear attack. On Tuesday, it vowed to bolster the development of what it called its nuclear deterrent along with missiles, accusing the United States of trying to invade the country.
The warning over inter-Korean relations comes as the North refuses to release the identities of four South Koreans it said last week were being questioned for illegally entering the communist state.
The North said during Tuesday's talks that it still had more questioning to do and would let the South know when the investigation is over. South Korean Unification Ministry spokeswoman Lee Jong-joo said in a briefing Wednesday that her government was continuing to try to verify the North Korean claim of detainment.
The divided Koreas have held a series of meetings this year on mutual steps to improve their only joint factory park that has combined South Korean capital with North Korean labor since 2004, but the sides have yet to make any significant progress.
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