North Korea to cut off road and rail links to South Korea

Seoul, South Korea CNN —

North Korea’s army said it will take a “substantial military step” to completely cut off its territory from South Korea on Wednesday, after months of fortifying its heavily armed border.

The announcement, which comes after North Korean leader Kim Jong Un scrapped a longstanding policy of seeking peaceful reunification with South Korea earlier this year, declared that remaining roads and railways connected to the South would be completely cut, blocking access along the border.

“The acute military situation prevailing on the Korean peninsula requires the armed forces of the DPRK to take a more resolute and stronger measure in order to more creditably defend the national security,” the General Staff of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) said, according to a notice on state-run news agency KCNA that referred to North Korea by the acronym for its official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

Since January, Pyongyang has fortified its border defenses, laying land mines, building anti-tank traps and removing railway infrastructure, according to the South Korean military.

Kim has also ramped up his fiery rhetoric against the South, referring to it as the North’s “primary foe and invariable principal enemy,” a description echoed in the latest KPA notice.

The General Staff said the measures were a response to recent “war exercises” held in South Korea and visits by US strategic nuclear assets in the region. Over the past year, a US aircraft carrier, amphibious assault ships, long-range bombers and submarines have visited South Korea, drawing angry rebukes from Pyongyang.

Hong Min, a senior research fellow at the Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul, said North Korea’s latest move