North Korea scraps military agreement with Seoul as tensions rise

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

North Korea has announced that it is scrapping a package of military confidence-building measures with South Korea, as tensions mount on the Korean peninsula after Pyongyang’s successful launch of its first military spy satellite.

The inter-Korean Comprehensive Military Agreement (CMA), reached in 2018 by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and South Korea’s then-president Moon Jae-in during a period of intense diplomacy, was designed to reduce military tensions along the historic foes’ border.

But the pact has come under increasing strain as North Korea has made unrelenting progress on its nuclear weapons programme, while South Korea has intensified joint military exercises with the US and Japan.

Following Pyongyang’s successful launch of a military reconnaissance satellite on Tuesday night, Seoul announced it was partially suspending the 2018 accord and would resume surveillance operations closer to the demilitarised zone that separates the countries.

That move prompted Pyongyang to declare on Thursday that it would abandon the agreement altogether.

“From now on, our army will never be bound by the September 19 North-South Military Agreement,” North Korea’s Central Military Commission said, according to a statement in the Rodong Sinmun state newspaper.

“We will immediately restore all military measures that have been halted,” the statement added, warning that “the so-called ‘Republic of Korea’ will be held wholly accountable in case an irretrievable clash breaks out between the north and the south”.

South Korea’s National Intelligence Service briefed lawmakers on Thursday on North Korea’s Malligyong-1 reconnaissance satellite, which had successfully reached orbit, according to South Korean state news agency Yonhap.

North Korea’s state news agency on Wednesday released images of Kim reviewing satellite images of US…