SEOUL (Reuters) – North Korean state media on Wednesday said around 1.4 million young people including students and youth league officials had applied to join or return to the army this week.
The young people are determined to fight in a “sacred war of destroying the enemy with the arms of the revolution,” the KCNA report said.
North Korea’s claim of having over one million young people applying to enlist in the country’s Korean People’s Army in just two days comes at a time when tensions in the Korean peninsula are running high.
Last year, North Korean media made a similar claim of its citizens volunteering to join the military to fight against the United States.
North Korea blew up sections of inter-Korean roads and rail lines on its side of the heavily fortified border between the two Koreas on Tuesday, prompting South Korea’s military to fire warning shots.
Pyongyang has also accused Seoul of sending drones over the North Korean capital and the two Koreas have clashed over balloons of trash floated since May from North Korea. Pyongyang has said the launches are a response to balloons sent by anti-regime activists in the South.
“If a war breaks out, the ROK will be wiped off the map. As it wants a war, we are willing to put an end to its existence,” the KCNA report said.
(This story has been corrected to say that young people had applied to join the army, not had joined, in the headline and paragraphs 1 and 3)
