North Korea severed its military hotline with South Korea on Wednesday, breaking

North Korea severed its military hotline with South Korea on Wednesday, breaking the last direct communication link between the two countries at a time of heightened military tensions.

The hotline move was relayed by a senior North Korean military official to his South Korean counterpart just before the link was severed.

Several weeks ago North Korea severed the Red Cross hotline that had been used for government-to-government communications in the absence of diplomatic relations.

Severing the military hotline could affect operations at the Seoul-funded Kaesong industrial complex just north of the border because it was used to organize movements of people and vehicles in and out.

The industrial estate – established in 2004 as a symbol of cross-border cooperation – has remained operational despite repeated crises in relations.

The South’s unification ministry urged the North to retract its action, saying it’s not good for “stable operation” of the complex where more than 50,000 North Koreans work at small labor-intensive South Korean plants.

Cutting the hotline was the latest in a series of threats and actions that have raised tensions on the Korean peninsula since the North’s long-range rocket launch in December and its nuclear test last month.

Both events triggered UN sanctions that infuriated Pyongyang, which has spent the past month issuing increasingly bellicose statements about unleashing an “all-out war”.

Earlier Wednesday the North announced an imminent meeting of its ruling party politburo and launched a scathing attack on South Korea’s new president, Park Geun-Hye.

A North Korean state committee accused Park of slander and provocation after she made a speech warning the North that failure to abandon its nuclear weapons programme would result in its collapse.

In Seoul, some analysts suggested the North was fast running out of threats and targets for its invective as it sought to bully the international community into negotiating on Pyongyang’s terms.

Cho said the coming politburo meeting would probably seek to keep “the momentum going” through some symbolic gesture.

Although North Korea is a past master of brinkmanship, there are concerns in South Korea and beyond that the current situation is so volatile that one accidental step could escalate into serious conflict.

On Tuesday the North’s military put its “strategic” rocket units on combat alert, with a fresh threat to strike targets on the US mainland, Hawaii and Guam, as well as South Korea.

Pentagon spokesman George Little said US forces were ready to respond to “any contingency”. Japan, which hosts a number of US bases, said its government was “on full alert”.

The US and South Korea signed a new pact last week, providing for a joint military response to even low-level provocation by the North.

Source AFP