China Debates Whether to ‘Keep or Dump’ North Korea

NYT: The clearest sign of China’s exasperation with North Korea came Thursday at a side session of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, an advisory group to the government that was open to the news media.

Delegates to the conference, according to a senior Communist Party official, Qiu Yuanping, talked about whether to “keep or dump” North Korea and debated whether China, as a major power, should “fight or talk” with the North.

In the annals of Communist Party decorum, Ms. Qiu’s description of the spirited debate was quite extraordinary.

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North Korea Nullifies 1953 Armistice

CNN: In a sign of crumbling relations, North Korea refused to answer its hotline with Seoul, South Korea's unification ministry said Monday, according to the Yonhap news agency.

The ministry said the North did not answer two attempts to communicate by telephone at 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. local time.

The latest military drills involving the two allies are called Key Resolve. They follow the Foal Eagle joint exercises that began March 1, which are scheduled to last two months. More than 3,000 U.S. forces are taking part in Key Resolve, according to United States Forces Korea.

The latest exercises fall under the shadow of North Korea's army declaring invalid the armistice agreement that ended the Korean War in 1953, an article in Rodong Sinmun, the official newspaper of North Korea's ruling Workers' Party, reported Monday.

With the declaration, Pyongyang made good on its threat to nullify the armistice.

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