[Timber Loftis]

North Korea Threatens to Withdraw From '53 Accord
By JAMES BROOKE

SEOUL, South Korea, Tuesday, Feb. 18 — North Korea's military threatened today to abandon its commitment to the 1953 Korean War armistice if the United States moves to impose penalties like a naval blockade for its suspected nuclear weapons program.

The North's state-run news media has kept the nation near a war hysteria since the nuclear crisis flared up last fall, and it was not clear if the latest statement marked a real change in policy. But the warning came from the nation's all-powerful military, the Korean People's Army.

"The K.P.A. side will be left with no option but to take a decisive step to abandon its commitment to implement the Armistice Agreement as a signatory to it and free itself from the binding force of all its provisions, regarding the possible sanctions to be taken by the U.S. side against the D.P.R.K.," the army statement said using the initials of North Korea's formal name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

On Monday, The New York Times reported that Bush administration officials were drawing up detailed contingency plans for penalties, including the interception of North Korean ships carrying arms and missiles for export.

"If the U.S. side continues violating and misusing the Armistice Agreement as it pleases, there will be no need for the D.P.R.K. to remain bound to the A.A. uncomfortably," said the statement published by the North's official Korean Central News Agency.

The statement was issued by the army mission at the border truce village of Panmunjom, 30 miles north of Seoul, the South's capital. In Seoul this morning, the South Korean Defense Ministry spokesman said no unusual moves by the North Koreans were sighted, telling Reuters, "Nothing has been going on."

The North Korean military, long a brake on easing relations with the South, is by far the most important institution in the impoverished nation. North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Il, has a background in theater and in spy work. To cultivate the military, he reportedly installed 1,000 generals and imposed on the nation an "army first policy," channeling about one quarter of national spending to the military. With 1.1 million people, or 10 percent of the population, in arms, North Korea is the world's most militarized nation.

Last weekend, in North Korea's southeast border region, soldiers appeared well fed, well clothed and omnipresent. Stern, unsmiling sentries were posted every 50 yards along a 10-mile fenced-in route used by South Korean tour buses. The occasional sight of a broken-down jeep or soldiers pushing bicycles down muddy lanes indicated that their equipment was poor.

On Friday, at a separate border point, a North Korean officer accused the United States of moving weapons into the southern sector of the Demilitarized Zone.

"We have seen armored cars and tanks inside the DMZ, which is a violation of the armistice because only officers can carry side arms inside the DMZ," the officer, Maj. Kim Kwang Kil, told a Reuters reporter who visited the North Korean side of Panmunjom. "They have increased the number of soldiers, and they are carrying heavy weapons."

American officials have said there has been no change in the positions of the 37,000 American troops on the peninsula. In Congressional testimony last week, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld raised the possibility of shifting American forces away from the zone and removing some of the American troops stationed in the South.

On Monday, the United States and South Korea announced annual bilateral military exercises in the South. The allies said they would hold their exercises from March 19 to 26. A related drill will be held from March 4 to April 2, they said. American officials here said the allies had told the North about the war games.

The North invariably protests the exercises, but today's statement was directed at the prospect of penalties.

The statement said the United States was planning to bolster its military forces around the peninsula and to "conduct naval blockade operations which can be seen only between the warring states during the war, and this is little short of an open declaration of war in the long run."