North Korea accuses its neighbour of trying to kill Kim Jong Il - Times Online

The clouds of suspicion and paranoia swirling over the world’s last remaining Cold War frontier darkened dramatically today when North Korea accused its southern neighbor of plotting to assassinate Kim Jong Il.

Government agencies within the nuclear-armed dictatorship said that they had foiled a plot involving a man who had crossed the border earlier this year armed with a collection of sophisticated spying tools, a dose of “violent poison”, and orders to “do harm to the security of the top leader” of North Korea.

The exceedingly rare public accusation was immediately dismissed as untrue by Seoul’s central spying agency, but still marks a new deterioration in the atmosphere across the Korean peninsula.

Analysts believe that the alleged discovery of an assassination attempt on Mr Kim may be a ruse by the North to divert attention from rumours of the despot’s ill health and further ratchet tensions in what is an already acrimonious climate.

via North Korea accuses its neighbour of trying to kill Kim Jong Il - Times Online.