Japan has been a strong supporter of a human rights investigation into North Korea. Japan has accused North Korea of kidnapping some of its citizens, and the issue remains a popular human rights and political cause. 
 
 The creation of a commission of inquiry would be a victory for defectors from North Korea, including a handful of people who are said to be survivors of the isolated country’s infamous prison camps. Some of them have become among the most vocal campaigners for human rights in North Korea, holding rallies, testifying about starvation and torture in gulags and arguing that foreign governments must break their silence about the people living under one of the most repressive systems in the world. 
 
 That argument has not always been popular in South Korea, where many of the defectors live. Many South Koreans believe that without an effective means of pressuring North Korea, which has defied and survived decades of international sanctions, an open challenge of its human rights record would only make it more paranoid and repressive. 
 
 South Korea used to abstain from any United Nations vote on human rights resolutions on North Korea. But after a conservative party took power five years ago, Seoul began voting for and even leading such moves. It also supports the creation of the commission of inquiry. 
 
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 Coupled with the new set of United Nations sanctions, the human rights report was expected to increase the pressure on the young North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un. Reports of a guarded relaxation of state control of the economy in North Korea have alternated with signs of a renewed crackdown on outside influences. 
 
 Concern over its nuclear program has sharpened international attention on North Korea, but human rights activists say that the North had rebuffed criticism of its abuses and that a commission of inquiry would provide a long-overdue spotlight on them. 
 
 “Increased scrutiny by international inquiry affords a measure of protection, especially when coupled with the prospect of future criminal investigations and the deterrent effect such a prospect may have on individual perpetrators,” according to Mr. Darusman’s report. 
 
 Mr. Darusman, taking stock of the United Nations investigations to date, identifies nine patterns of human rights violations, including denial of access to food, arbitrary detention in prison camps that are estimated to hold up to 200,000 people, and abductions of foreigners. Many, if not all, of these patterns “may amount to crimes against humanity, committed as part of systematic and/or widespread attacks against civilian populations,” the report says. 
 
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 Testimony from prisoners who have escaped the North Korean gulags appears to have played a part in the decision to take action. Ms. Pillay, in calling for an international inquiry in January, cited the “extremely harrowing” nature of the accounts she had received in a meeting with two of the escaped prisoners, describing a system that she called “the very antithesis of international human rights norms.” 
 
 After eight years of inquiries, investigators had reached the point where they were forced to call for greater resources to continue their research, Mr. Darusman said in a telephone interview. Like other investigators, he has worked with a single assistant, limiting a sustained investigation. A commission of inquiry is likely to have three members, including Mr. Darusman, supported by researchers and a full-time secretariat. 
 
 Even if an inquiry is commissioned, it remains unclear how effective it will be except as political symbol. North Korea does not allow outside investigators. And other countries have few means to force Pyongyang to provide access. No outsider has ever had a glimpse of a North Korean prison camp. 
 
 North Korea rejected a critical General Assembly resolution in December as a “political plot” that escalated confrontation. The abuses that North Korea is accused of committing “cannot be allowed to exist in our country, where human rights and the fundamental freedom of the people are formally guaranteed by the legal system,” said Kim Song, the North Korean ambassador to the United Nations. ||||| The Obama administration bluntly warned North Korea on Monday that it will use military force if necessary to protect the United States and its allies in Asia from a North Korean nuclear strike or to prevent the impoverished North from selling nuclear weapons or expertise. 
 
 Washington announced fresh sanctions against North Korea on Monday amid rising tension on the Korean Peninsula. The U.S. military also began annual joint exercises with ally South Korea, over objections from North Korea and an announcement that it would nullify the 60-year armistice that ended the Korean War. 
 
 “Recently, North Korean officials have made some highly provocative statements,” White House national security adviser Thomas E. Donilon told the Asia Society in New York. “North Korea’s claims may be hyperbolic, but as to the policy of the United States, there should be no doubt.” 
 
 “We will draw upon the full range of our capabilities to protect against, and to respond to, the threat posed to us and to our allies by North Korea,” he said. 
 
 Donilon added that while the United States would like better relations with North Korea, it “refuses to reward bad North Korean behavior.” 
 
 “The United States,” he said, “will not play the game of accepting empty promises or yielding to threats.” 
 
 The United States is one of five nations that have sought unsuccessfully to negotiate a buyout of the North Korean nuclear program. The North has tested three nuclear devices and is assumed to be gradually perfecting the technology to deliver a nuclear warhead far from its own shores. 
 
 On Monday, the rising tensions on the Korean Peninsula were underscored by the North’s announcement that it had “completely scrapped” the 1953 armistice agreement. 
 
 The armistice has kept a shaky peace on the peninsula for 60 years, and the North’s apparent withdrawal — coupled with its severing of a communications hotline at the demilitarized border Monday — makes it more difficult for South Korea and the United States to prevent or resolve disputes with Pyongyang. 
 
 North Korea has made several similar announcements in the past, most recently in 2009, and analysts cautioned this latest declaration could prove to be bluster. Experts also noted that Pyongyang — whether bound by the cease-fire or not — has occasionally ignored its terms, most notably with fatal attacks on the South in 2010. 
 
 Still, anxiety about the North is particularly high now for the United States and its allies because they have little insight into the decision-making style of Kim Jong Eun, the young leader who took power of the opaque police state in December 2011 and now appears to be using the same brand of brinkmanship his father once did. 
 
 Kim on Thursday visited troops on several Yellow Sea islets off North Korea’s southern coast, not far from a South Korean island that was shelled in 2010. According to a state media account of the visit, Kim “reconfirmed in detail reinforced firepower strike means and targets of the enemy.” 
 
 “They’re giving all the motions to make us believe that some sort of provocation is coming,” said Ken Gause, an expert on North Korean leadership at CNA, an Alexandria-based organization. “Provocations are not necessarily imminent, but the probability is higher . . . and the ability to manage a provocation is much more difficult if they have withdrawn from the communication channels that existed under the armistice.” 
 
 Gause added that the North’s latest threats were more specific than usual — an escalation that has experts “scratching their heads about how willing they are to push the envelope.” 
 
 Many experts think that the North, by raising tensions and pulling away from existing lines of communication, is trying to pressure the United States into bilateral talks. In such talks, those experts believe, the North would seek a peace treaty, a major reduction of U.S. troops in the region and recognition as a nuclear state — a concession that Obama administration officials say they refuse to consider. 
 
 Denuclearization “is still the goal of U.S. policy,” Glyn Davies, the U.S. envoy for North Korea, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday. 
 
 The new sanctions unveiled Monday by the Obama administration target North Korea’s main foreign exchange bank and several of the country’s top economic leaders. The Foreign Trade Bank of North Korea was singled out because of its alleged support for companies linked to the country’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs, said David S. Cohen, undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence. 
 
 The sanctions freeze any U.S. assets that may be owned by the bank, and, more significantly, they serve as a warning to other countries that trade with North Korea, Cohen said. “We urge financial institutions around the world to be particularly wary of the risks of doing business” with the trade bank, he said. 
 
 Yoonjung Seo in Seoul and Joby Warrick in Washington contributed to this report. ||||| South Korean soldiers patrol along a barbed-wire fence near the demilitarized zone (DMZ) which separates the two Koreas in Paju, north of Seoul, March 11, 2013. North Korea has cut off a Red Cross hotline with South Korea as it escalates its war of words against Seoul and... 
 
 A worker paints the wall with a roller next to a map bearing the demilitarized zone (DMZ) which separates the two Koreas at Imjingak pavillion in Paju, north of Seoul, March 11, 2013. North Korea has cut off a Red Cross hotline with South Korea as it escalates its war of... 
 
 A South Korean soldier stands guard in front of a barbed-wire fence near the demilitarized zone (DMZ), which separates the two Koreas, in Paju, north of Seoul, March 11, 2013. North Korea has cut off a Red Cross hotline with South Korea as it escalates its war of words... 
 
 South Korean soldiers patrol along a barbed-wire fence near the demilitarized zone (DMZ), which separates the two Koreas, in Paju, north of Seoul, March 11, 2013. 
 
 South Korean soldiers patrol past ribbons bearing messages wishing for unification of the two Koreas, arranged in the shape of the Korean peninsula, near the demilitarized zone (DMZ), which separates the two Koreas, in Paju, north of Seoul, March 11, 2013. 
 
 South Korean soldiers walk pass birds as they patrol along a barbed-wire fence near the demilitarized zone (DMZ), which separates the two Koreas, in Paju, north of Seoul, March 11, 2013. 
 
 A girl runs past pinwheels arranged in the shape of the Korean peninsula at Imjingak pavillion near the demilitarized zone (DMZ) which separates the two Koreas in Paju, north of Seoul, March 11, 2013. North Korea has cut off a Red Cross hotline with South Korea as it... 
 
 North Korean soldiers with weapons attend military training in an undisclosed location in this picture released by the North's official KCNA news agency in Pyongyang March 11, 2013. South Korea and U.S. forces are conducting large-scale military drills until the end of... 
 
 North Korean soldiers run as they attend military training in an undisclosed location in this picture released by the North's official KCNA news agency in Pyongyang March 11, 2013. South Korea and U.S. forces are conducting large-scale military drills until the end of April,... 
 
 North Korean soldiers attend military training in an undisclosed location in this picture released by the North's official KCNA news agency in Pyongyang March 11, 2013. South Korea and U.S. forces are conducting large-scale military drills until the end of April, while the... 
 
 A man looks at a map bearing the demilitarized zone (DMZ), which separates the two Koreas, at Imjingak pavillion in Paju, north of Seoul, March 11, 2013. 
 
 SEOUL North Korea has cut off a Red Cross hotline with South Korea as it escalates its war of words against Seoul and Washington in response to a military drill in the South and U.N. sanctions imposed for its recent nuclear test. 
 
 The North had threatened to cut off the hotline on March 11 if the United States and South Korea did not abandon their joint military exercise. 
 
 The Red Cross hotline is used to communicate between Seoul and Pyongyang which do not have diplomatic relations. 
 
 "We called at 9 a.m. and there was no response," a government official from South Korea said. The line is tested each day. 
 
 Pyongyang has also threatened to cut off a hotline with U.N. forces in South Korea, at the border "truce village" of Pammunjom. 
 
 Tensions on the Korean peninsula have risen since the North conducted a third nuclear test on February 12, prompting new U.N. sanctions. 
 
 South Korea and U.S. forces are conducting large-scale military drills until the end of April, while the North is also gearing up for a massive state-wide military exercise. 
 
 North Korea has accused the United States of using the military drills in South Korea as a launch pad for a nuclear war and has threatened to scrap the armistice with Washington that ended hostilities in the 1950-53 Korean War. 
 
 The North has threatened a nuclear strike on the United States, but such a threat has been dismissed as rhetoric by analysts, as the North does not have the military capacity to reach the United States. 
 
 The North is viewed as more likely to stage some kind of attack along a disputed sea border, if it does anything at all, rather than risk a war with South Korea and the United States, which it would lose, according to most military assessments. 
 
 (Reporting by Ju-min Park; Editing by Michael Perry) ||||| Image caption South Korean marines patrol Yeonpyeong Island, shelled by the North in 2010 
 
 North Korea knows how to make headlines. 
 
 Over the past week, newspapers here in the South have turned Pyongyang's threats into front-page spreads: its promises of "pre-emptive nuclear strikes", "all-out war" and withdrawal from the 60-year-old Armistice Agreement that ended the Korean War. 
 
 South Koreans normally approach these kinds of declarations with a weary stoicism, barely pausing over their cappuccinos as they absorb the latest threats from their neighbour. 
 
 This time, though, the atmosphere here in Seoul is a little more anxious. While some dismiss it as just more of Pyongyang's bluster, others are worried by the volume and tone of the latest proclamations. 
 
 That goes for older South Koreans, in particular, say some. 
 
 Image caption Some see the North's Kim Jong-un (seated) as "not strong" 
 
 "Young Koreans are very desensitized," one friend told me. "If it enters their heads at all, it dissipates very quickly, replaced with the latest celebrity (gossip). But the older generation do feel differently on security issues." 
 
 "I didn't care about this issue until now," said another. "But I do worry this time around. The young North Korean leader is not strong, and I don't trust the new government here in the South." 
 
 Even South Korea's Unification Ministry admits the mood has shifted. "Overall, there's a heightened sense of alert this time," a spokeswoman said. 
 
 Not just because of the "more belligerent rhetoric" coming from Pyongyang, but because of the actions accompanying them. 
 
 North Korea's launch of a long-range rocket in December, its apparently successful nuclear test in February and the fresh UN sanctions imposed on it this month have all added to the sense of tension on the peninsula. 
 
 Some South Koreans are worried that the wrong lessons have been learned, and that if something small happens, it could escalate because the South Korean government doesn't want to be accused of doing nothing" John Delury, Yonsei University 
 
 Joint military exercises taking place here this month between the US and South Korean forces have also antagonised the North, just as they do every year. 
 
 The secretive communist state is due to begin its own large-scale military drills this week. 
 
 Few people here are expecting full-blown war, but in the current climate, there is concern over accidental escalation, especially after North Korea's decision to cut the military hot-line between the two sides at Panmunjom. 
 
 Even this though is not unprecedented. The telephone line at Panmunjom has been abandoned by the North before, most recently in 2010. 
 
 The year before that, it also announced its withdrawal from all joint agreements involving the South. And analysts point out that an alternative military communications line, used to monitor cross-border workers at the Kaesong Industrial Complex, remains open. 
 
 "I'm not so worried," another Korean friend told me. "Even though they have cut the hotline, I see their rhetoric as a plea for direct negotiations with the US." 
 
 Talking tough 
 
 But alongside Pyongyang's increasingly shrill denunciations, South Koreans are hearing some strong language from their own government too. 
 
 Image caption Park Geun-hye was just recently sworn into office 
 
 The country's new president, Park Geun-hye, who was sworn into office just two weeks ago, has vowed to respond strongly to any provocation. 
 
 Her government has said it will target not only the source of any attack, but also the North's top command. 
 
 That tough stance, while worrying to some, is likely to be a kind of "pre-emptive rhetorical deterrence", according to analysts such as John Delury, a professor of International Studies at Seoul's Yonsei University. 
 
 The idea that strong words could act as a deterrent to North Korean actions has gained traction since the lethal shelling of South Korea's Yeonpyeong Island in 2010. 
 
 As a government, Prof Delury says: "You're always fighting the last battle, and the last battle for South Korea was Yeonpyeong. The perception then was that North Korea had got away with shelling the island." 
 
 By talking tough, he believes Park Geun-hye wants to avoid any initial attack by the North. 
 
 But, he said, "some South Koreans are worried that the wrong lessons have been learned, and that if something small happens, it could escalate because the South Korean government doesn't want to be accused of doing nothing". 
 
 For all North Korea's familiar rhetoric, its past actions against the South have seemed carefully calibrated not to provoke a full-scale conflict. 
 
 The question is whether the young leader in Pyongyang will correctly judge the mood of its adversaries this time around. ||||| Adding to South Koreans’ worries, the North and its nuclear arsenal are in the hands of a young new leader, Kim Jong-un , whose brinkmanship appears to be an effort to ensure the support of his nation’s powerful military. 
 
 The South also has a new president, Park Geun-hye , the daughter of a military strongman who stood firm against North Korea, who herself also faces pressure to stand fast against the North. Just two weeks after her inauguration , Ms. Park faces a crisis as the North makes vague threats interpreted by many South Koreans as the precursor to some sort of limited, conventional military provocation. Ms. Park has promised to retaliate if her nation is attacked, aware of the public anger directed at her predecessor, Lee Myung-bak , when he showed restraint after the North shelled a South Korean island in 2010, killing four people. 
 
 That kind of limited skirmish is more likely than a nuclear attack, but such an episode could quickly inflame tensions and escalate out of control. Over the years, North Korea has sent armed spies across the border, dug invasion tunnels under it and infiltrated South Korean waters with submarines. 
 
 But beyond the immediate fear of a military provocation, analysts say deeper anxieties are also at work in the South. One of the biggest is the creeping resurgence of old fears about the reliability of this nation’s longtime protector, the United States. Experts say the talk of South Korea’s acquiring nuclear weapons is an oblique way to voice the concerns of a small but growing number of South Koreans that the United States, either because of budget cuts or a lack of will, may one day no longer act as the South’s ultimate insurance policy. 
 
 “The Americans don’t feel the North Korean nuclear weapons as a direct threat,” said Chung Mong-joon, a son of the founder of the Hyundai industrial group and the former leader of the governing party, who has been the leading proponent of South Korea’s development of a nuclear weapons program. “At a time of crisis, we are not 100 percent sure whether the Americans will cover us with its nuclear umbrella.” 
 
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 The United States, which still has 28,500 troops based in South Korea, has sought to assure its ally that it remains committed to the region as part of the Obama administration’s strategic “pivot” to Asia . But analysts say the fact that senior leaders like Mr. Chung and a handful of influential newspaper columnists now call for the need for “nuclear deterrence,” or at least hint at it, reflects widespread frustrations over the inability of the United States and other nations to end North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. Until recently the idea was too radical for most mainstream leaders and opinion makers, including both deeply pro-American conservatives and nationalistic yet antinuclear liberals. 
 
 Advocacy for a nuclear-armed South Korea has been virtually taboo since the early 1970s, when the country’s military dictator, Park Chung-hee, made a serious bid to develop a nuclear weapon, fearing that the United States might pull out of Asia after its defeat in Vietnam . After catching wind of the program, Washington forced Mr. Park, the new president’s father, to stop, persuading him instead to rely on the United States, an agreement that has held ever since. 
 
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 Mr. Chung and others say that if the United States does not allow South Korea to develop its own nuclear arms, it should at least restore the nuclear balance on the Korean Peninsula by reintroducing American atomic weapons, which were removed from bases in the South in 1991 in a post-cold-war effort to reduce tensions. 
 
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 Many in the South are now convinced that the North may never give up its nuclear weapons. The South’s new level of anxiety is also apparent in the widespread speculation here about when and where the North might carry out another, non-nuclear military provocation. 
 
 North Korea has stoked those fears by saying that on Monday it will drop out of the 60-year-old armistice that ended the Korean War, in a show of anger at new United Nations sanctions for its nuclear test. North Korea has threatened to terminate the armistice in the past, but the greater worry now is that it might take actions to contravene it. There have been cryptic warnings in North Korea’s state-run news media of coming “counteractions,” which have led South Korean officials to warn of an episode like the bombardment of Yeonpyeong Island in 2010. 
 
 On Friday, North Korea’s state-run television showed Mr. Kim addressing the same artillery units that hit Yeonpyeong. On the same day, South Korean television stations showed President Park with heavily decorated generals, and later descending into the bunker at the Blue House, South Korea’s version of the White House, to confer with her national security advisers. 
 
 The opposition parties had blocked the confirmation of her cabinet, raising concerns about her ability to respond to a crisis, but she reached a deal allowing her to fill crucial posts on Monday. Even many on the left said that the country would quickly pull together if shots were fired. 
 
 “The third test was a wake-up call for the left, too,” said Lee Kang-yun, a television commentator. 
 
 On the streets of Seoul, it has remained business as usual with no signs of panic, a testimony to the resilience, or perhaps resignation, of a people who have grown used to the North’s threats. 
 
 Chung Eun-jin, a 26-year-old English teacher interviewed in the trendy Gangnam district, said she was not overly concerned because the North had threatened the South so often before. But Kwon Gi-yoon, 38, an engineer, said that since the North’s third test, he believed that South Korea should develop its own nuclear weapons. 
 
 Opinions like Mr. Kwon’s appear to be spreading. Two opinion polls conducted after the third test, one by Gallup Korea and the other by the Asan Institute for Policy Studies, found that 64 to 66.5 percent of the respondents supported the idea that South Korea should develop its own nuclear weapons, similar to polls after the Yeonpyeong attack in 2010. 
 
 “Having a nuclear North Korea is like facing a person holding a gun with just your bare hands,” said Mr. Kwon, the engineer. South Koreans should have “our own nuclear capabilities, in case the U.S. pulls out like it did in Vietnam.”
– North Korea today "completely scrapped" the armistice that held a tenuous peace on the peninsula for six decades, reports the Washington Post, even as American and South Korean troops began the large-scale military drills Pyongyang had warned them to abandon. The North is playing up its unpredictability, saying in a state-run newspaper today that with the armistice gone, “no one can expect what will happen next.” Further heightening tensions: The Red Cross hotline the North uses to communicate with Seoul has gone dead. "We called at 9am and there was no response," explains a South Korean official of the line, which it tries daily. The North has also threatened to cut off its hotline with UN troops—and to nuke the United States. North Korea, which is planning huge military exercises of its own, claims the US-South Korea drills are a move to launch a nuclear war. Analysts believe Pyongyang isn't capable of launching a nuclear strike on the US even if the regime was deranged enough to try. But some kind of attack along the disputed sea border with South Korea is seen as a more realistic possibility, reports Reuters. As threats fly back and forth, some South Koreans are openly discussing obtaining nuclear weapons of their own. Pyongyang's nuclear test last month, its third, "was for South Korea what the Cuban missile crisis was for the US," a professor at the Korea National Defense University tells the New York Times. "It has made the North Korean threat seem very close and very real." The hotline-closing and scrapping of peace pacts have recent precedents, but the mood in Seoul is tenser than it has been after previous outbursts from Pyongyang, the BBC finds. North Korea's tone is more belligerent, and people fear the regime is more willing to back its threats up with action. If Pyongyang was enraged by fresh UN sanctions last week, today will be more of the same as the UN examines its appalling human rights record, the New York Times reports. An investigator will present a report that is expected to lead to an inquiry into possible crimes against humanity.