Regime creating piles of propaganda in retaliation for similar campaign from South amid worsening relations

North Korea is gearing up to send propaganda leaflets over its southern border, denouncing North Korean defectors and South Korea, its state media said on Saturday, the latest retaliation for leaflets from the South as bilateral tensions rise.

The North’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported: “The enraged people across the country are actively pushing forward with the preparations for launching a large-scale distribution of leaflets to pour the leaflets of punishment upon those in South Korea who are bereft of even elementary morality.”

Pyongyang news agency steps up war of words against Seoul as Kim Jong-un’s sister says South’s president has put his neck in ‘noose of US flunkyism’

North Korea has accused South Korea of behaving like a “mongrel dog” bent on confrontation in a state media report that explains the regime’s decision to blow up a liaison office – a move that has significantly raised tensions between the two countries.

A commentary carried by the state KCNA news agency said the South’s defence ministry was “bragging and bluffing, rattling the dialogue partner and stoking a confrontational atmosphere”, and warned that Tuesday’s destruction of the office – which opened in 2018 to foster better cross-border ties – could be a prelude to a “total catastrophe” in North-South relations.

Kim Jong-un’s sister had said office, set up to improve co-operation with South Korea, was ‘useless’

North Korea has blown up a liaison office set up to improve communications with the South, media reports said, in a row over defectors’ plans to send anti-Pyongyang propaganda leaflets across the heavily armed border.

South Korea’s unification ministry said the North had set off an explosion at the joint liaison office at 2:49 pm, in the North Korean border town of Kaesong. The reports, from the Yonhap news agency, added that military sources had heard an explosion and seen smoke rising from the building.