Asia-Pacific

DPRK accuses ROK of violating armistice agreement

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2010-03-29 11:19

PYONGYANG - The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) Monday urged the Republic of Korea (ROK) to cease its anti-North campaigns along the Military Demarcation Line, the official news agency KCNA reported.

"The South Korean military allowed 15 media organizations to enter the Demilitarized Zone to prepare materials for anti-North smear campaigns," a spokesman of the DPRK's Panmunjom Mission of the Korean People's Army (KPA) was quoted by the KCNA as saying.

The spokesman described these moves as "deliberate acts to turn the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) into a theater of confrontation with the DPRK and a site of psychological warfare against the North in disregard of the Armistice Agreement (AA) and strain the overall situation on the Korean Peninsula."

As a signatory to the AA, the United States is obliged to stop the moves of the ROK military, said the spokesman.

He demanded that the United States intervene immediately to halt the ROK moves which are disrupting security and order in the DMZ. He warned ROK to cancel its plan to turn the DMZ into a site of psychological warfare "if it wants to escape the unexpected strike of the KPA."

Running 240 km across the middle of the Korean Peninsula, the Military Demarcation Line was designated on the basis of the AA signed on July 7, 1953.

According to the AA, the spokesman said, "No person, military or civilian, shall be permitted to enter the Demilitarized Zone except those concerned with the conduct of civil administration and relief and specially authorized to enter by the Military Armistice Commission."