North Korea severs diplomatic ties with US
About the article
This is a digitised version of an article from The Cayman Compass's print archive. Occasionally, the digitisation process introduces transcription errors, or other problems.
See the article in its original context from January 1988.
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The action came in retaliation for U.S. sanctions over the bombing of a South Korean jetliner.
"As a retaliatory step against the U.S. sanctions, we will refrain from meeting American diplomats in international arena and not permit the entry of those of American nationality into our country and will not have any negotiation with the United States over the issue of remains of the dead Americans from Feb. 1, 1988," a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry said in a statement carried by the North's official Korean Central News Agency. North Korea said it had "suffered due to the U.S." and "has the right to take even severer steps than sanctions" against the United States. The statement did not elaborate.
Last week, the U.S. State Department put North Korea on its list of countries that support terrorism. The action was in retaliation for the bombing of a South Korean jetliner last November in which 115 people died. A 25-year-old passenger on an earlier part of the flight said Jan. 15 that she was a North Korean agent and had planted a bomb. As part of its sanctions, the United States had already withdrawn authorization for U.S. diplomats to hold "substantive discussions" with North Korean diplomats in neutral settings.
