Playing with fire on the Korean peninsula

Democratic Korea dramatically countered recent south Korean provocations by blowing up the empty north–south liaison office in the border town of Kaesong this week. This dramatic piece of street art was clearly intended to send a message to the Seoul regime that has resorted to old Cold War tricks along the de-militarised zone that divides the Korean peninsula.

Helium balloons carrying anti-communist propaganda leaflets have regularly been launched into the DPR Korea by what the puppet regime calls “defectors”. But everyone knows that these people, more accurately called “riff-raff” and “human scum” by the north, are agents of south Korean intelligence, which itself is but an arm of the CIA.

During the height of the Cold War the Americans and their local lackeys used balloons to drop dollars and propaganda across the armistice line drawn up at the end of the Korean war in 1953. Donald Trump’s summits with Kim Jong Un raised hopes of a new page in inter-Korean relations. But despite the fine words, the Americans have done nothing apart from stepping up their blockade of the DPRK.

 The south Korean leaders are now regretting their rash actions. They’re calling for fresh talks to end the tension. But without a genuine desire for normalisation it is difficult to see how such talks can begin.

The liaison office established in 2018 had operated as a de facto south Korean embassy when the new Seoul regime posed as a supporter of peace and re-unification. It was closed in January. Now it’s just smoke and rubble.