The U.S. government on Tuesday called for North Korea to refrain from further provocations after Pyongyang blew up an inter-Korean liaison office just north of its border with South Korea, fueling tension with its neighbor.
While offering "full" support to South Korea's efforts to promote inter-Korean relations, a State Department spokesperson said that the United States "urges the DPRK to refrain from further counterproductive actions."
DPRK is the acronym for North Korea's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
A senior White House official separately said the United States will remain "in close coordination" with South Korea in the wake of the incident.
Pyongyang has been stepping up its provocative rhetoric against the United States and South Korea amid stalled nuclear talks that have left North Korea continuing to struggle under sanctions.
Last Friday, which was the second anniversary of the first-ever U.S.-North Korea summit, North Korea's foreign minister pledged that Pyongyang will press on with the development of nuclear weapons to cope with "the long-term military threats from the U.S."
On Tuesday, North Korea destroyed the joint liaison office set up in the country's border city of Kaesong after threatening to do so in retaliation for anti-Pyongyang leaflets sent by balloon across the border by defector groups and other activists.
The official Korean Central News Agency reported that the building was "tragically ruined with a terrific explosion."
U.S. President Donald Trump has met North Korean leader Kim Jong Un three times. At the first-ever U.S.-North Korea summit in June 2018 in Singapore, Trump promised to provide security guarantees to Pyongyang in return for "complete" denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
But talks have since shown little progress, with the two countries having been at odds over issues such as the degree of sanctions relief for Pyongyang in return for its denuclearization steps.
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