http://www.voanews.com/content/us-south-korea-begin-annual-military-drills-amid-threats-from-north-korea/1619027.html
SEOUL — South Korean officials say Pyongyang seems to have made good on a threat to sever the hotline at the Panmunjom truce village as South Korea and the United States commence a joint military exercise Monday. The North is responding to the exercise by claiming it will abrogate the 1953 Armistice Agreement and threatening a preemptive nuclear strike.
As more than 13,000 American and South Korean military personnel began the Key Resolve annual joint drill, no one on the northern side of the de-militarized zone answered the routine daily 9 am hotline telephone call from the South.
The two sides have a protocol of phone contact twice daily.
A Unification Ministry spokesman says South Korea did not bother to try again to make the regular 4 p.m. call Monday.
Last week, North Korea announced it was severing the communications link, established in 1971.
South Korean officials say this is the sixth time the North has cut the line, the most recent occasion in 2010.
South Korean Defense Ministry officials say the North's senior military officer, Vice Marshal Hyong Yong Chol, made an inspection visit to Panmunjom Saturday evening.
Kim Min-seok is a spokesman for the Ministry of National Defense in Seoul. Kim says North Korea continues to make provocative threats, but the South's military is ready to strike back against any aggression.
In Pyongyang, the Monday edition of the worker's party newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, declares the armistice agreement "completely nullified from today."
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