North Korea claims more than a million people joined army this week

Following Pyongyang’s accusation that Seoul’s military was using drones to enter its airspace, North Korea said on Wednesday that over a million young people had enlisted in or returned to the army this week.

On Tuesday, Pyongyang ordered soldiers stationed along the border to get ready to fire and destroyed highly symbolic roads and railways that connected the two Koreas. Pyongyang had earlier warned that any additional drone flights would be interpreted as a declaration of war.

Although Pyongyang claims to have “clear evidence” of government involvement in the campaign—which allegedly includes anti-regime propaganda pamphlets spread throughout the North’s capital—Seoul first denied sending drones.

“Millions of young people have turned out in the nationwide struggle to wipe out the ROK scum who committed a serious provocation of violating the sovereignty of the DPRK through a drone infiltration,” the official Korean Central News Agency said, referring to both countries by their official acronyms.

On October 14 and 15, more than 1.4 million youth league officials, young people, and students nationwide volunteered to enlist in or return to the Korean People’s Army, according to the report.

All men in North Korea are already required to serve in the military for extended periods of time, and the country has claimed to have seen waves of patriotic enlistments during periods of high tension with Washington or Seoul.

South Korean activists have long floated balloons carrying anti-Pyongyang regime pamphlets over the border; this practice enrages the North, which has responded by barraged the South with balloons containing rubbish. It is yet unknown who is behind the drone missions.

South Korean authorities in areas near the border with the nuclear-armed North are moving to prevent activists from launching balloons.

To protect its citizens, the provincial government of Gyeonggi will designate Yeoncheon, Gimpo and Paju “as special ‘danger’ zones where anyone trying to send leaflets to the North may be subject to criminal investigation”, an officer from the Gyeonggi provincial goverment told AFP.
“The Gyeonggi Province considers the act of distributing anti-North leaflets to be a crisis-causing dangerous act that could cause a military conflict,” the Gyeonggi government said in a separate statement.