North Korea calls South Korea’s ‘deliberate’ mine-planting accusation blame shifting

“The ‘mine-explosion case’ is a sinister obstructive move intended to brand our fortification of the southern border, downright exercise of the sovereignty, as a ‘military invasion’ and delay and check it,” the North Korean Foreign Ministry said in a statement carried by the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

Pyongyang said the incident was “no more than a poor trick” by South Korea “to shift the blame for its own accident onto us.”

North Korea’s reaction came after Seoul said Monday that Pyongyang had “deliberately planted” the two mines and reiterated its demand for an apology.

“The military strongly calls on North Korea to offer a sincere apology to the South Korean soldiers injured in the mine blast and immediately remove the mines it planted in violation of the armistice agreement,” Lt. Gen. Kwon Dae-won, vice chairman of the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), told a news conference.

Seoul “seeks to hold” Pyongyang “accountable for the premeditated farce, fabricated and determined unilaterally by it, and tarnish the latter’s international image,” the North’s ministry said.

North Korea “categorically rejects the despicable attempt” and “solemnly clarifies that our state will exercise its just sovereign rights in a more resolute and bold manner to ensure the security of the southern border,” it added.

“We do not care about them trying to remove the mines irrelevant to us, and we have no reason to pay heed to such farce of the ROK,” the ministry said.

It warned that if “a jackboot or a spark of fire from the ROK goes even a millimeter beyond the border to violate our territory,” North Korean border guards would take “immediate and powerful counteraction.”

It added that if a similar incident occurs in the future, North Korea is “not responsible for it,” saying the side that sustains the incident would be “entirely accountable.”

The Korean Peninsula has remained divided since the 1950-53 Korean War ended with an armistice rather than a peace treaty, leaving the two Koreas technically at war.