North Korea seeks crisis to force concessions: Analysts

A man watches a TV screen showing a news program with a file image of Kim Yo-jong, the sister of North Korea's leader Kim Jong-un, at the Seoul Railway Station in Seoul, South Korea, on, June 17, 2020. - AP

SEOUL (AFP): North Korea's spectacular destruction of its liaison office with the South is part of a series of staged provocations aimed at forcing concessions from Seoul and Washington, analysts say.

The South's President Moon Jae-in initially brokered a dialogue between Pyongyang and Washington, but the North now blames him for not persuading the US to relax sanctions.