N. Korea breaks communications with South

SEOUL, March 9 (UPI) -- North Korea cut remaining inter-Korean communications Monday to protest the South Korean-U.S. military drills, officials said.

The announcement forced hundreds of South Koreans to cancel trips to an inter-Korean industrial park in the communist state while hundreds of others remain at the complex a few miles from the border, the South Korean news agency Yonhap reported.

"It is nonsensical to maintain normal communications channel at a time when the South Korean puppets are getting frantic with the above-said war exercises, leveling guns at fellow countrymen in league with foreign forces," a spokesman for the General Staff of the Korean People's Army said in a statement published by the North's Korean Central News Agency. "As an immediate measure we will enforce a more strict military control and cut off the north-south military communications."

In addition, North Korea said any attempt to intercept a satellite it plans to launch would precipitate a war. Last week the country warned it couldn't ensure the safety of South Korean passenger planes that enter the North's airspace.

North Korea ordered its military to be combat ready, saying the South Korean-U.S. exercise that began Monday is aimed at launching a "second Korean War," Yonhap said.

South Korea Unification Ministry spokesman Kim Ho-nyoun said his government has been patient with the North's recent actions, but demanded Pyongyang back off.

"We demand that North Korea immediately stop its denunciations ... and tension-raising behavior," Kim said.