EXACERBATING TENSIONS
Recent events in the escalation of nuclear tensions on the Korean Peninsula:
March 7: The U.N. Security Council imposes tough sanctions against North Korea to punish it for conducting a nuclear test on Feb. 12 in defiance of U.N. resolutions banning it from nuclear and missile activity.
March 11: South Korea and the U.S. begin annual joint military drills. North Korea responds by cutting a hotline with South Korea and voiding the 60-year-old armistice ending the Korean War.
March 12: North Korean state media report that the country's leader, Kim Jong Un, urged front-line troops to be on "maximum alert" and warned that "war can break out right now."
March 20: Coordinated cyberattacks in South Korea knock out computers and servers at three major TV networks and three banks. North Korean involvement is suspected.
March 22: North Korea condemns a U.N. resolution approving a formal investigation into its suspected human rights violations.
March 27: North Korea cuts a military hotline to its Kaesong industrial complex, which is jointly run with the South. Operations at the complex continue.
March 28: The U.S. says two of its nuclear-capable B-2 bombers joined the military drills with South Korea.
March 29: Kim signs a rocket preparation plan and orders his forces on standby to strike the U.S. mainland, South Korea, Guam and Hawaii.
March 30: North Korea warns that "inter-Korean relations have naturally entered the state of war," and says it would retaliate against any U.S. and South Korean provocations without notice.
Monday: The U.S. announces it sent F-22 stealth fighter jets to participate in the U.S.-South Korean war games.
Tuesday: North Korea's atomic energy department says it will restart a plutonium reactor and a uranium enrichment plant at its main Nyongbyon nuclear complex and increase production of nuclear weapons material.
Wednesday: North Korea bars South Koreans from going to their jobs at the Kaesong industrial complex and closes the border to trucks carrying materials.
In past deadly confrontations between North and South Korea, a jointly operated industrial park stayed open, churning out goods.
But in the latest sign that North Korea’s warlike stance toward South Korea and the United States is moving from words to action, the North on Wednesday barred South Korean managers and trucks delivering supplies from crossing the border to enter the Kaesong industrial park.
It’s an announcement that further escalates a torrent of actions that analysts say is aimed at pressuring the U.S. and South Korea to change their policies toward North Korea.
The Kaesong move came a day after the North said it would restart its long-shuttered plutonium reactor and a uranium enrichment plant. Both could produce fuel for nuclear weapons that North Korea is developing and has threatened to hurl at the U.S., but which experts don’t think it will be able to accomplish for years.
The North’s rising rhetoric has been met by a display of U.S. military strength, including flights of nuclear-capable bombers and stealth jets at annual South Korean-U.S. military drills that the allies call routine and North Korea says are invasion preparations.
The Kaesong industrial park has been an unusual point of cooperation in an otherwise hostile relationship between the Koreas, whose three-year war ended in 1953 with an armistice, not a peace treaty.
It has remained open despite the sinking of a South Korean warship in 2010, killing 46 people, which Seoul blamed on the North, and a North Korean artillery attack on a front-line South Korean island later that year that killed four people. The North denies involvement in the ship sinking and says a South Korean live-fire drill triggered the bombardment.
Kaesong’s continued operation through those episodes of high tension, and its high economic value to impoverished North Korea, has reassured foreign multinationals that another Korean War is unlikely and their investments in prosperous, dynamic South Korea are safe.
It is unclear how long North Korea will prevent South Koreans from entering the industrial park, which provides jobs for more than 50,000 North Koreans who make goods such as textiles, clothing and electronic components. The last major disruption at the park amid tensions over U.S.-South Korean military drills in 2009 lasted just three days.
In Washington, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said in a speech at the National Defense University that the north’s rhetoric represents a “real, clear” danger to the U.S. and its Asia-Pacific allies and said America is doing all it can to defuse the situation.
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