North Korea forward deploys amphibious landing crafts carrying special forces

North Korea has deployed amphibious landing crafts carrying special forces to the frontline as the country keeps up its tight combat readiness despite on-going inter-Korean talks to defuse military tension, military sources said Monday.

About 10 North Korean air-cushioned landing crafts have left their home base in Cholsan, North Pyongan Province, and come forward to a naval base, located about 60 kilometers north of the Northern Limit Line, the de facto inter-Korean border in the Yellow Sea, the sources said.

“Since North Korea declared a semi-war state, its invasion vehicles and forces have been actively moving,” one of the sources said.

More than 50 North Korean submarines are also apparently away from their bases for operations, a sign that the North is gearing up for combat while participating in high-level talks aimed at easing tension, an official here said.

“Seventy percent of North Korea’s submarines left their bases, and their locations are not confirmed,” the South Korean military official told reporters.

The North is known to have around 70 submarines.

The unpredictable communist nation has also doubled the number of its artillery troops on the border, with the command to be combat ready, according to the official.

Meanwhile, high-level talks between South and North Korea stretched into a third day Monday amid no clear signs of progress in defusing heightened tensions on the divided peninsula.

“Negotiations are under way” between South Korea’s National Security Adviser Kim Kwan-jin and Hwang Pyong-so, the North Korean military’s top political officer, presidential spokesman Min Kyung-wook told reporters.

Hong Yong-pyo, Seoul’s point man on Pyongyang, and his North Korean counterpart, Kim Yang-gon, joined the talks at the border village of Panmunjom that separates the two Koreas.

Still, Min declined to give any further details, saying media reports could have a negative effect on the negotiations.

A key sticking point appears to be South Korea’s propaganda broadcasts along the heavily fortified border.

South Korea resumed the psychological warfare tactic earlier this month for the first time in 11 years in retaliation against North Korea for a recent landmine attack that maimed two South Korean soldiers.

South Korea accused the North of planting the mines inside the demilitarized zone that separates the two Koreas, a charge denied by North Korea.

On Thursday, North Korea gave a 48-hour ultimatum to South Korea to end propaganda broadcasts and dismantle all loudspeakers, saying it otherwise will launch “strong military action.”
North Korea also warned Friday that it is prepared to engage in “all-out war.” The Pyongyang-set deadline for defusing the crisis passed without a military clash.

North Korea views the broadcastings critical of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un as an insult to its dignity. The isolated country is also concerned that an influx of outside information could pose a threat to Kim.

Still, South Korea has vowed to keep blaring anti-Pyongyang messages through loudspeakers along the border.

Tensions between the Koreas have risen dramatically since Thursday’s exchange of artillery fire.

The North fired one artillery shell across the border Thursday afternoon before firing several more rounds later in apparent anger over South Korea’s resumption of the propaganda broadcasts. South Korea fired back dozens of shells.

The North later claimed that it never started Thursday’s exchange of fire with the South and accused Seoul of fabricating the allegations that the communist nation fired first.

Source: koreaobserver.com