International passenger flights have been diverted after the government of North Korea threatened military action against South Korean airliners in the latest escalation of verbal hostilities between the two enemies.

Both of South Korea’s airlines, Korean Air and Asiana, have diverted flights from the east after a statement on North Korea’s official media which implied a threat of attack against civilian aviation. It came in a statement denouncing a joint military exercise between South Korea and the US, which Pyongyang accuses of representing preparations for an invasion of the North.

“No one knows what military conflicts will be touched off by the reckless war exercises,” said the statement on the state-run Korean Central News Agency on Thursday. “[North Korea] is, therefore, compelled to declare that security cannot be guaranteed for south Korean civil airplanes flying through the territorial air of our side and its vicinity, its territorial air and its vicinity above the East Sea of Korea, in particular, while the military exercises are under way.”

The US statement described the statement as “distinctly unhelpful”, and the South Korean government demanded that it be withdrawn. “Threatening civilian airliners' normal operations under international aviation regulations is not only against the international rules but is an act against humanity,” a spokesman for the country’s unification ministry, Kim Ho Nyeon said in Seoul. “The government urges the North to immediately withdraw the military threat against civilian airliners.”

Under an international agreement, North Korea receives €685 (£610) for each jumbo jet which passes through its airspace, but flights were diverted after yesterday’s warning, adding as much as an hour to flight times and costing airlines an extra four million won (£1,800) per flight.

The US-South Korean exercises, code named Key Resolve and Foal Eagle, will begin on Monday and last for eleven days. They always draw bellicose denunciations from the North, but this year they take place at a time of increasing tension over the North’s preparations for firing a long range rocket, which could potentially strike targets in the far western United States.

The North insists that it is a vehicle for the launch of a peaceful communications satellite; foreign governments say that, even if this is true, its potential for dual use as a missile makes any test launch a violation of UN resolutions.

“]The exercises] are dangerous actions for war that they may develop into an actual war any moment,” KCNA said. “Under the touch-and-go situation where the north and the south are in full combat readiness and level their rifles and artillery pieces at each other, no one can guess what will trigger off a war.”

Back