South Korea Reports an Exploded Inter-Korean Liaison Office in DPRK

The DPRK authorities bombed a liaison office with South Korea located in the border town of Kaesong, the South Korean Yonhap agency reports citing the country’s Unification Ministry and South Korean army sources. The Inter-Korean Liaison Office was opened in September 2018. It was assumed that twice a day, representatives of North and South Korea would hold meetings in it and develop inter-Korean exchanges. Following the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, face-to-face meetings were replaced by telephone calls. On June 8, DPRK representatives did not answer the call from the South for the first time, and later ignored urgent military communications. A few days before, the authorities announced that they were considering closing the office. This reaction was caused by propaganda leaflets sent by two organizations of North Korean defectors to the DPRK. The day before, the official Central Telegraph Agency of Korea reported that the DPRK army is considering the possibility of sending troops into the demilitarized zone on the border of the two countries. On Tuesday, South Korean troops were put on high alert. An official comment from the North Korean media regarding a possible explosion has not yet been received.