Family Life

05.27.09 | FL News Team

North Korea says it will launch a military strike against South Korea if the nation joins other countries that inspect ships bound for the North  In addition, Pyongyang says it is no longer bound by the armistice that ended the Korean War in 1953. The abandonment of that treaty is due, says North Korea, to Washington's drawing Seoul into the effort to check vessels suspected of carrying equipment that could be used to build weapons of mass destruction.

All of this comes in the wake of Monday's nuclear test by the North and the launching of several short range missiles this week. The U.N. Security Council is still trying to find a way to punish Pyongyang for the nuclear blast. Seoul announced yesterday it would get off the fence and join the U.S. led Proliferation Security Initiative involving ship inspections.

South Korean media is also reporting today that North Korea has restarted a nuclear power plant that is able to make plutonium used in nuclear weapons. That plant had been shut down and was supposed to be destroyed after North Korea received humanitarian aid from an assortment of other nations. The economy of North Korea has fallen into ruin since Kim Jong-il took over leadership of the nation in 1994.