North Korea ends 60-year armistice with South

State media reported yesterday that Pyongyang has carried out its threat to cancel the 60-year-old armistice that ended the Korean War.

The news came as Pyongyang and South Korea staged war games, amid threatening rhetoric that has risen to the highest level since North Korea rained artillery shells on a South Korean island in 2010.

Enraged over the South’s joint military drills with the United States and recent UN sanctions, Pyongyang has piled threat on top of threat. Seoul has placed its troops on high alert.

The North Korean government made no formal announcement on its repeated threats to scrap the armistice, but the country’s main newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, reported that the armistice was nullified.