North Korea blew up the northern parts of inter-Korean roads, amid rising tensions over the North’s claim that South Korea flew drones over its capital.
South Korea’s military said it fired warning shots near its heavily fortified border on Tuesday after North Korean forces reportedly destroyed roads along the border.
It comes days after the North vowed to permanently seal off its southern border.
Interestingly, I think this indicates the outbreak of real hostilities is slightly less likely. The existence of roads in/around the DMZ would be to the benefit of the party launching an offensive. The fewer roads there are, the harder it becomes to effectively deploy troops south of the line.
Blowing up transportation links is a defender’s trick. The attacker seeks to preserve them to aid in further troop movement and supply. Unless the plan is to launch a limited attack and then sit back in a defensive posture. I don’t see how a war of attrition benefits the North though, with their much smaller population and economy.
Maybe they’re sending everything to Ukraine and just want to make sure the South doesn’t get any idea
/jk
I’m not even sure if that is a joke. If they’ve sold a lot to Russia and are paranoid about the south exploiting their relative weakness, removing road links would make sense.
South Korea doesn’t want to invade. The costs of rehabilitating the North Korean people would be crippling.
I unironically think that that’s NK’s logic here, despite the fact that there’s an approximately 0% chance SK would EVER launch an unprovoked invasion of the north.
NK is probably doing this because they don’t have any big rockets to shoot into the ocean right now. Anything for attention.
Really good thoughts. And pontoon bridges or other temporary structures have their limitations.
With that said, I don’t really see S. Korea wanting to invade N. Korea. Short of a radical change in leadership.