Fresh recruits: North Korean youth signing petitions to join or return to the army, according to North Korean state media, at an undisclosed location in North Korea. — Reuters
Pyongyang claimed that more than a million young people had signed up for or rejoined the army this week after Pyongyang accused Seoul’s military of sending drones into its airspace.
The North on Tuesday blew up deeply symbolic roads and railways connecting the two Koreas after warning any further drone flights would be considered a declaration of war, and ordered soldiers on the border to prepare to fire.
Seoul initially denied sending drones, but Pyongyang claims it has “clear evidence” of official involvement in the campaign, which purportedly features anti-regime propaganda leaflets scattered over the North’s capital.
“Millions of young people have turned out in the nationwide struggle to wipe out the ROK scum who committed a serious provocation of violating the sovereignty of the DPRK through a drone infiltration,” the official Korean Central News Agency said yesterday, referring to both countries by their official acronyms.
It said more than 1.4 million youth league officials and youth and students across the country volunteered to join or rejoin the Korean People’s Army this week.
North Korea already has lengthy periods of mandatory military service for all men, and has previously made claims of patriotic waves of enlistments at times of high tensions with Seoul or Washington.
While it remains unclear who is behind the drone flights, South Korean activists have long flown balloons carrying anti-Pyongyang regime leaflets over the border, a tactic that infuriates the North and which has responded by bombarding the South with trash-carrying balloons. — AFP
