Tensions build as North Korea scraps armistice

North Korean soldiers perform drills

Pyongyang has suspended an agreement that has maintained the status quo for almost 60 years 

Tensions on the Korean Peninsula Monday reached their highest level since the November 2010 shelling of Yeonpyeong Island, with Pyongyang announcing it had scrapped the armistice that put an end to active fighting in the Korean War in 1953, as well as apparently shutting down a Red Cross communications hotline.

The moves coincided with South Korea and the U.S. launching a large-scale military exercise. The excessively strident rhetoric out of Pyongyang, which also included a threat to launch a nuclear strike against the U.S. and to cancel its nonaggression pact with the South, follows the adoption of U.N. Security Council Resolution 2094 that imposed additional sanctions against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) for its third nuclear test on Feb. 12.

My article, published today in The Diplomat, continues here.