The latest move came after Pyongyang accused South Korea of ​​sending drones carrying propaganda leaflets over its capital.

According to the South Korean military, North Korea has blown up the northern sections of the roads connecting it to South Korea.

Some parts of the road north of the military demarcation line dividing the countries were blown up around midday (0300 GMT), the Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a message sent to media on Tuesday.

The military fired warning shots south of the demarcation line, it said.

Seoul warned on Monday that Pyongyang was preparing to blow up the streets.

Tensions on the Korean peninsula have increased since North Korea accused its neighbor of sending drones carrying propaganda leaflets over the country’s capital, Pyongyang.

The blasts came a day after North Korean leader Kim Jong Un called a meeting with his top military and security officials to discuss the issue.

During the meeting, Kim called the flights a “serious provocation of the enemy” and laid out unspecified tasks related to “immediate military actions” and the use of his “war deterrent” to defend the country’s sovereignty, North Korean state media reported earlier on Tuesday.

North Korea had previously put front-line artillery and other army units on standby to launch attacks on South Korea if its drones were found over North Korea again. South Korea has refused to confirm whether it sent drones but warned it would severely punish North Korea if the safety of its citizens was threatened.

Destroying the roads would be in line with Kim Jong Un’s push to sever ties with South Korea, officially cementing it as his country’s main enemy and abandoning North Korea’s decades-long goal of peaceful unification of Korea.

In 2020, North Korea blew up the two Koreas’ liaison office, marking the end of a period of detente.

In November last year, Pyongyang announced it would move more troops and military equipment to the border and would no longer be bound by a 2018 joint military agreement, after Seoul suspended parts of the agreement in response to Pyongyang’s launch of a military spy satellite.

South Korean officials said North Korea began building anti-tank barriers and laying mines along the border earlier this year.