Bellicose rhetoric is a usual feature of life between North Korea and South Korea. When more modern means of communications are unavailable, threats are sent the old-fashioned way: using a fax machine.
North Korea, ruled by the young dictator Kim Jong-un, sent a fax to South Korea on Thursday — the only military communications link between the two countries. It threatened to "strike mercilessly without notice" in response to anti-North Korea public protests in Seoul this week. North Korea’s National Defense Commission addressed to fax to the presidential office in South Korea.
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Fax is the primary mode of communication between the North and South Koreas. Email is not used, and the only telephone line, operated at the border, was shut down by North Korea this spring after serious tensions between the two countries.
The two countries also share an administrative office at the jointly-operated Kaesong industrial plant, located at the border, where civilian officials from the North and South meet, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Upon receiving the fax, South Korea didn't hesitate to respond with its own rhetoric , sending a reply promising "resolute punishment" in case of a strike.
"We warned that if North Korea is to carry out provocation, we will firmly retaliate," Kim Min-seok, the spokesman for South Korea's Ministry of National Defense, told the Journal.
The fax spat began after a rally held in the South Korean capital of Seoul this week, during which conservative South Korean activists and North Korean refugees celebrated the two-year anniversary of the death of Kim Jong-il, the former North Korean dictator and father of Jong-un. During the march, the protesters burned flags and even pictures Jong-Un. Despite rising rhetoric, South Korea didn't report any unusual military movements on the other side of the border.
Just last week, Jong-un ordered the execution of his uncle, believed to be the second-highest in command in North Korea.
The two countries have reportedly exchanged faxes in the past. A North Korean committee sent one in late May of this year asking South Korea to commemorate the anniversary of an agreement between the two countries, which was signed in 2000.
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Image: Ed Jones/Getty Images