SEOUL: North Korea is severing all official communication links with the South, it announced Tuesday in a move analysts said was aimed at manufacturing a crisis on the divided peninsula.
Since last week the North has issued a series of vitriolic denunciations of the South over activists sending anti-Pyongyang leaflets over the border - something defectors do on a regular basis.
In recent days authorities in the North have organised large-scale rallies across the country of citizens pledging their support, with inter-Korean ties at a standstill despite three summits between the North's leader Kim Jong Un and the South's President Moon Jae-in in 2018.
Tuesday's move cuts all official communication links between the two sides, but the immediate effect will be limited - Pyongyang has refused to engage with Seoul for months, with few if any conversations on the lines aside from test calls.
The latest development comes just three days before the two-year anniversary of a landmark summit between Kim and US President Donald Trump in Singapore.
The United States said it was "disappointed" by the announcement, with a State Department spokesperson urging North Korea to "return to diplomacy and cooperation". Negotiations over the North's nuclear programme have been deadlocked since the collapse of a second Trump-Kim meeting in Hanoi last year over what the North would be willing to give up in exchange for sanctions relief.
The impasse has left Pyongyang increasingly frustrated over the lack of concessions and analysts say it has taken no substantive steps towards giving up its weapons.
It has increasingly turned its anger towards Seoul rather than Washington, carrying out a series of weapons tests and other provocations in recent months - including last month shooting at a South Korean guard post in the Demilitarized Zone that divides the peninsula.
Tuesday's statement repeatedly denounced defectors who send leaflets to the North by balloon and bottle criticising Kim over his weapons programmes and human rights abuses.
It called them "disgusting riff-raff" and accused Seoul of complicity in their actions. "This has driven the inter-Korean relations into a catastrophe," KCNA said, describing Seoul as an "enemy".
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