North Korea rejects South’s offer of envoys, vows to redeploy troops to border

North Korea on Wednesday rejected South Korea’s offer to send special envoys to ease escalating tensions over defector activity and stalled reconciliation efforts and vowed to redeploy troops to border areas.

The announcements made by state media agency KCNA came a day after North Korea blew up a joint liaison office set up in a border town as part of a 2018 peace agreement between the two countries’ leaders.

Any moves to invalidate cross-border peace deals pose a major setback to South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in’s efforts to foster more lasting reconciliation with the North.

They could also complicate efforts by U.S. President Donald Trump, already grappling with the coronavirus pandemic and anti-racism protests, to persuade Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear and missile programmes.

On Monday, Moon offered to send his national security adviser Chung Eui-yong and spy chief Suh Hoon as special envoys, KCNA said. But Kim Yo Jong, the sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and a senior ruling party official, “flatly rejected the tactless and sinister proposal”.

“The solution to the present crisis between the North and the South caused by the incompetence and irresponsibility of the South Korean authorities is impossible and it can be terminated only when proper price is paid,” KCNA said.

North Korea’s Rodong Sinmun, the ruling Workers’ Party’s official newspaper, published photos showing the liaison office before and after its demolition, alongside a series of KCNA articles and commentaries criticising South Korea.

“Ominous prelude to total catastrophe of North-South relations,” one of the articles was headlined, referring to the office’s destruction.