North Korea’s army said it will take the “substantial military step” of completely cutting off its territory from South Korea on Wednesday, after months of fortifying its heavily armed border.

The announcement, which comes after North Korean leader Kim Jong Un scrapped a longstanding policy of seeking peaceful reunification with South Korea earlier this year, declared that remaining roads and railways connected to the South would be completely cut, blocking access along the border.

“The acute military situation prevailing on the Korean peninsula requires the armed forces of the DPRK to take a more resolute and stronger measure in order to more creditably defend the national security,” the General Staff of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) said, according to a notice on state-run news agency KCNA that referred to North Korea by the initials of its official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

Since January, Pyongyang has fortified its border defenses, laying land mines, building anti-tank traps and removing railway infrastructure, according to the South Korean military.

Kim has also ramped up his fiery rhetoric against the South, referring to it as the North’s “primary foe and invariable principal enemy,” a description echoed in the latest KPA notice.

The General Staff said the measures were a response to recent “war exercises” held in South Korea and visits by what it claims are US strategic nuclear assets in the region. Over the past year, a US aircraft carrier, amphibious assault ships, long-range bombers and submarines have visited South Korea, drawing angry rebukes from Pyongyang.

In a response Wednesday, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said North Korea’s announcement was “a desperate measure stemming from the insecurity of the failed Kim Jong Un regime” and would “only lead to [its] harsher isolation.”

Hong Min, a senior research fellow at the Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul, said North Korea’s latest move formalizes work already being done along its militarized border and suggests Pyongyang may aim to constitutionalize it in the future.

Simmering tensions

Inter-Korean hostilities have simmered this year as North Korea appears to have intensified its nuclear production efforts and strengthened ties with Russia, deepening widespread concern in the West over the isolated nation’s direction.

Last week, Kim threatened to use nuclear weapons to destroy South Korea if attacked, after South Korea’s president warned that if the North used nuclear weapons it would “face the end of its regime.”

Kim’s comments appeared to come in direct response to South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, who showcased Seoul’s most powerful ballistic missile and other weapons designed to deter North Korean threats during a parade for Armed Forces Day on October 1.

Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha Womans University in Seoul, said the Korean army’s announcement could be Pyongyang’s attempt to “shift blame for its economic failures and legitimize its costly buildup of missiles and nuclear weapons” by exaggerating external threats.

“Kim Jong Un wants domestic and international audiences to believe he is acting out of military strength, but he may actually be motivated by political weakness,” Easley said. “North Korea’s threats, both real and rhetorical, reflect the regime survival strategy of a hereditary dictatorship.”

North and South Korea have been separated since the Korean War ended in 1953 with an armistice agreement. The two sides are still technically at war, but both governments had long sought the goal of one day reunifying.

In January, Kim said North Korea would no longer seek reconciliation and reunification with South Korea, calling inter-Korean relations “a relationship between two hostile countries and two belligerents at war,” KCNA reported at the time.

In its statement, the North Korean army said it notified US forces on Wednesday morning to “prevent any misjudgment and accidental conflict” over its “fortification project.”

Mourners wept and monks prayed at a cremation ceremony Tuesday in a small town in central Thailand for 23 young students and teachers who died in last week’s bus fire on a school field trip.

A large cremation site was set up close to the temple in Lan Sak town whose compound hosts the school that was attended by the victims. Several furnaces with tall chimneys were erected, with floral adornments placed in front of them.

Six teachers and 39 elementary and junior high school students were on the bus when it caught fire on October 1 on a highway in Pathum Thani, a northern suburb of Bangkok. It spread so quickly that only 22 people were able to escape.

After forensic work in Bangkok made positive identifications of the badly burnt bodies, the victims’ remains were were returned to their hometown for funeral rites that began last week.

The tragedy sparked national outrage over insufficient safety procedures and pushed the authorities to take immediate legal action. Police arrested the driver of the bus for alleged reckless driving and announced they were charging the woman in whose name the bus was registered with negligence causing death.

Transport officials were being scrutinized after information emerged that the bus had passed an inspection about four months before the fire. In the wake of the accident, investigators found that the bus was fitted with 11 natural gas canisters although it had a permit for only six.

Officials have said that the bus, which was more than 50 years old, had been modified to run on CNG — compressed natural gas — which is often used especially by commercial vehicles to save money. Police believe that a gas tube from one of the canisters had come loose, with sparks then setting the leaking gas on fire.

The more than 13,000 buses running on CNG were ordered to be inspected within 60 days, while the Education Ministry suspended school study trips in the meantime.

Tuesday’s cremation in Uthai Thani province was held under the sponsorship of King Maha Vajiralongkorn, who sent the head of his Privy Council, former army chief and prime minister Surayud Chulanont, to represent him.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has apologized after using an ableist slur to taunt political opponents in parliament.

Albanese was speaking during question time on Tuesday when opposition lawmakers repeatedly interrupted him.

“Have you got Tourette’s or something? You know, you just sit there, babble, babble, babble,” he said, before immediately adding: “I withdraw and apologize.”

Albanese later returned to the chamber to make a more formal apology.

“I made comments that were unkind and hurtful. I knew it was wrong as soon as I made the comment,” he said.

“I apologized and I withdrew as soon as I said it, but it shouldn’t have happened and I also want to apologize to all Australians who suffer from this disability.”

Albanese’s apology came after strong criticism from figures including shadow minister for health and aged care Anne Ruston.

Tourette’s syndrome is a neurological disorder that involves tics that present themselves in various ways, described by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke as “repetitive, stereotyped, involuntary movements and vocalizations.”

“Mocking a disability is no laughing matter,” Ruston wrote in post on X, adding that the comment was “absolutely despicable behaviour” from Albanese.

“Australians living with Tourette’s deserve the PM’s respect, not his ridicule,” she added.

“I’m incredibly disappointed and just gobsmacked somebody that has the national stage would use that platform and Tourette syndrome to make an insult,” she said.

Maysey, who has three children with Tourette’s, said the disability can be socially isolating.

“This shows we have a very long way to go until Tourette syndrome is taken seriously as a condition,” she added.

Singers Lewis Capaldi and Billie Eilish have both spoken about their experiences of living with Tourette’s.

“The worst thing about it is when I’m excited I get it, when I’m stressed I get it, when I’m happy I get it. It happens all the time,” Capaldi said in February 2023.

A few months later, Capaldi announced that he was taking a break from touring due to the impact of Tourette’s

In 2022, Eilish told David Letterman that the condition can be “exhausting.”