Seoul, South Korea
CNN
—

North Korea’s military said Wednesday it will take the “substantial military step” to completely cut off its territory from South Korea, after months of fortifying its heavily armed border.

The announcement, which comes after North Korean leader Kim Jong Un scrapped a long-standing policy of peaceful reunification with South Korea earlier this year, declared that the remaining roads and railways linked to the South would be completely cut off , which would block access along the border.

“The acute military situation on the Korean Peninsula requires the armed forces of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea to take a more determined and forceful measure to meritoriously defend national security,” the General Staff of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) said. to a report on state news agency KCNA that referred to North Korea by the initials of its official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

According to the South Korean military, Pyongyang has strengthened its border defenses since January, laying land mines, building anti-tank traps and removing railway infrastructure.

Kim has also stepped up his fiery rhetoric against the South, calling the country the North’s “main enemy and unchangeable principal enemy,” a description echoed in the latest KPA message.

The General Staff said the measures were in response to recent “war exercises” in South Korea and visits by what it said are US strategic nuclear assets in the region. Over the past year, a U.S. aircraft carrier, amphibious assault ships, long-range bombers and submarines have visited South Korea, drawing angry rebukes from Pyongyang.

In a response Wednesday, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said North Korea’s announcement was “a desperate measure born of the insecurity of the failed Kim Jong Un regime” and would “only lead to (the) harsher isolation .”

Hong Min, a senior research fellow at the Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul, said North Korea’s latest move formalizes the work already being done along the militarized border and suggests that Pyongyang could look to expand it in the future constitutionalize the country.

“If North Korea were to introduce a new territorial clause through a constitutional amendment and sever its relationship with the South, the internal and external consequences would be so great,” Hong told CNN, suggesting Pyongyang is taking small steps in that direction .

Inter-Korean hostilities have flared this year as North Korea appears to have stepped up its nuclear production efforts and strengthened ties with Russia, heightening widespread concern in the West about the isolated country’s direction .

Last week, Kim threatened to use nuclear weapons to destroy South Korea if it were attacked, after South Korea’s president warned that if the North used nuclear weapons it would “expect the end of its regime.”

Kim’s comments appeared to be a direct response to South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, who presented Seoul’s most powerful ballistic missiles and other weapons designed to target North Korea during an Oct. 1 Armed Forces Day parade. deter threats.

Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha Womans University in Seoul, said the Korean military’s announcement could be Pyongyang’s attempt to “deflect blame for its economic failures and legitimize its costly buildup of missiles and nuclear weapons.” ” by exaggerating external threats.

“Kim Jong Un wants the domestic and international public to believe he is acting out of military strength, but in fact he may be motivated by political weakness,” Easley said. “North Korea’s threats, both real and rhetorical, reflect the regime’s survival strategy of a hereditary dictatorship.”

North and South Korea have been separated since the Korean War ended with an armistice agreement in 1953. The two sides are technically still at war, but both governments have long pursued the goal of reunification.

In January, Kim said North Korea would no longer seek reconciliation and reunification with South Korea, calling inter-Korean relations “a relationship between two hostile countries and two warring parties at war,” KCNA reported at the time.

In its statement, the North Korean military said it had notified US forces on Wednesday morning to avoid “any misjudgment and unintended conflict” over its “reinforcement project.”

The United Nations Command – a multinational military force charged with securing the heavily fortified DMZ between the two Koreas – confirmed that the North Korean military had been contacted, but said it could not confirm the specific content of the messages would not discuss ‘out of consideration of the integrity of the hotline.”