- North Korea destroyed parts of roads and rail lines connecting it with South Korea.
- It comes after North Korea last week accused South Korea of flying drones over its capital.
- Experts told BI the road destruction was symbolic, and is unlikely to lead to full-scale war.
North Korea blew up parts of roads and rail lines connecting it with South Korea on Tuesday in a move that has escalated tensions in the region.
In response, South Korea fired warning shots within its own border, according to South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff. It described North Korea’s actions as “extremely abnormal.”
The destruction, however, is mainly symbolic and is unlikely to lead to war, experts told Business Insider.
“Most of the inter-Korean roads have been closed off since 1953 anyway,” said Jim Hoare, a historian and former British diplomat in North Korea.
“It is, in fact, another symbolic gesture, but in reality, it makes no difference to what the situation has been on the ground.”
Tensions between the Koreas have been simmering since before the Korean War divided them in 1953.
North Korea’s approach used to lean toward reunifying the two countries, but that has changed in recent months.
In 2020, North Korea blew up the Inter-Korean Liaison Office in Kaesong, which used to serve as a de-facto South Korean embassy.
In December last year, state media reported that North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-Un, announced he would no longer be seeking reunification and that South Korea was now a hostile state.
“I believe that it is a mistake that we should no longer make to consider the people who declare us as the ‘main enemy’… as a counterpart for reconciliation and unification,” he said in a statement.
Trade between the two Koreas has now fallen to almost zero from $2.7 billion in 2015, according to Bloomberg.
The detonations come after North Korea last week accused South Korea of flying drones over its capital Pyongyang. South Korea has neither confirmed nor denied the accusation.
Kim’s sister, Kim Yo Jong, released a stern warning on Monday: “The moment that a drone of [South Korea] is discovered in the sky over our capital city once again it will certainly lead to a horrible disaster,” she said.
Edward Howell, Korea Foundation Fellow at Chatham House, told BI that despite the aggressive tone of the communications, the growing escalations are “all part of North Korea’s strategy that we see at the moment, which is one of brinkmanship.”
Howell added that historically, North Korea has stepped up provocations during US election years. “It wants to test and see whether the US will give it any concessions,” he said.
A full-scale war on the Korean Peninsula could cost the global economy $4 trillion in the first year, or 3.9% of GDP, according to analysis by Bloomberg Economics.
But while the situation seems tense, it is unlikely to ramp up to full-scale war. “Indeed, if I were planning an invasion, I would not blow up the routes into the south,” said Hoare.
For North Korea, “the destruction of the roads serves as a dramatic spectacle, both for a foreign audience and for a domestic audience, of their hostility and displeasure with the south,” Peter Ward, a research fellow at the Sejong Institute think-tank in Seoul, told the Financial Times.
“But it allows them to do so in such a way that grabs attention without inviting a military response,” he added.
“Because in the end all they are doing is destroying their own roads, and if they want to rebuild them one day, the one thing they have plenty of is concrete.”
