N. Korea to ‘restrict and cut off’ cross-border relations with South

North Korea’s powerful military announced Wednesday it will shut the country’s border with the South on Dec. 1 – a marked escalation of threats against Seoul’s new conservative government at a time of heightened tension on the peninsula.

The military’s chief delegate to inter-Korean talks informed his South Korean counterpart Wednesday that the North will “restrict and cut off” cross-border routes next month, state-run Korean Central News Agency said.

Analysts called it a pointed political move designed to humiliate Seoul by hobbling a joint industrial park in the city of Kaesong, just across the border, that has served as a beacon of hope for reconciliation.

Relations between the two Koreas – separated by troops, tanks and one of the world’s most heavily armed borders since a three-year war that ended in a truce in 1953 – have been frosty since South Korea’s President Lee Myung-bak took office in February.