South Korean soldiers at Panmunjom in March 2023
In 2018, South Korea and North Korea reached a historic agreement, part of which was to disarm soldiers at the JSA (also known as the Panmunjom truce village), a site in the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). Recently, after North Korea launched a rocket carrying a satellite into space, Seoul announced it was abandoning part of the agreement, followed by Pyongyang also announcing it was abandoning the agreement.
Yonhap news agency on November 28 quoted informed sources as saying that North Korean soldiers had started carrying handguns since last weekend, while South Korean soldiers remained unarmed. Also on November 28, KCNA news agency said that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un had examined photos taken by the country's first spy satellite of the White House, the Pentagon and aircraft carriers at a naval base in the US.
North Korea cancels military agreement with South Korea, announces deployment of new weapons
Pyongyang's latest satellite launch sparked a rare public war of words between the US and North Korean ambassadors to the United Nations on November 27. While the US claims its military exercises on the Korean peninsula are purely defensive, North Korea says Washington is threatening it with nuclear weapons and that Pyongyang has the right to develop similar weapons systems to the US.
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