DPRK accuses U.S. of allowing heavy arms into DMZ

The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) Thursday accused the United States and South Korea of deploying heavy arms in the demilitarized zone (DMZ) next to the Military Demarcation Line, saying this would cause an "unpredictable military clash."

The state media KCNA reported that a spokesman for the Panmunjom Mission of the Korean People's Army said that according to a report made public by local South Korean media last week, the United Nations Command has revised the armistice rules to allow U.S. and South Korean troops to carry heavy weapons like machine guns, recoilless rifles and mortars into the DMZ and the revision went into effect on Sept. 5, 2014.

"Such undisguised breach of the armistice agreement has turned the DMZ into a heavily armed zone ... and this is a product of the ceaseless U.S. moves to ignite another Korean War," the spokesman said.

He blamed the United States for "paying lip service" to observing the armistice agreement signed in 1953 following the end of the Korean War and for aiming to incite military confrontation between the two Koreas.

The DPRK military is keeping a close eye on the military actions of the "enemies" along the demarcation line, he said.

The Korean Peninsula remains technically in a state of war because the 1950-1953 Korean War was ended with an armistice rather than a peace agreement.

The DMZ, 250 km long and four km wide along the demarcation line, serves as a buffer zone between the North and the South and originally, only small individual arms were allowed into the zone. Endi