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.
