Defying international pressure to give up its nuclear ambitions, North Korea accused the US yesterday of beefing up its military around the Korean Peninsula in an attempt "to crush us to death."
The North's communist regime was reacting after US officials in Washington said Monday that US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is considering options including sending an aircraft carrier to the waters off the Korean Peninsula and adding bombers in Guam.
The move is intended as a signal to Pyongyang that the US remains capable of blunting an attack in Korea despite its focus on possible war in Iraq, the officials said.
The US has 37,000 troops in South Korea, a legacy of the 1950 to 1953 Korean War.
"In an attempt to crush us to death, the US military is scheming to beef up forces in Japan and South Korea," said North Korea's Central Radio, monitored by South Korea Yonhap news agency.
In a report by its state-run KCNA news agency, North Korea also said its people are ready to sacrifice for their leader and socialism "no matter how the world may change."
North Korea's media routinely churn out anti-US invective but it has become more frequent and intense since the nuclear dispute erupted in October when Pyongyang admitted having a nuclear weapons program.
"The Korean people have a particular attachment to the socialist system chosen and built by themselves in their own way," KCNA said in a report, also monitored by Yonhap.
"This unity means the unity of the people in the faith that they are ready to share the destiny with leader Kim Jong-il in difficulties and ordeals and their unity in the will to always remain true to their pledge made to him no matter how the world may change," it said.
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said US President George W. Bush still believes the North Korean standoff can be resolved peacefully.
Rumsfeld met Monday at the Pentagon with Chyung Dai-chul, a special envoy for South Korean President-elect Roh Moo-hyun, who takes office on Feb. 25.
Rumsfeld and Chyung discussed the future of the US-South Korean military alliance and the need for updating and modernizing it, according to a Pentagon spokesman, Navy Lieutenant Commander Jeff Davis.
At the UN, Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Monday appealed for urgent funds to avert "a major humanitarian crisis" in North Korea and create better conditions to peacefully resolve the nuclear standoff.
The impoverished North has been dependent on outside aid since 1995 to help feed its 22 million people. More than 2 million North Koreans are believed to have died of hunger or hunger-related diseases in the late 1990s.
While trying to resolve the North's nuclear dispute through diplomacy, the US wants to bring the issue before the UN Security Council, which could eventually consider sanctions against Pyongyang.
In Vienna, the UN International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed that its 35-nation board of governors will meet Feb. 12 to discuss the North's nuclear standoff. The meeting could refer the dispute to the UN Security Council.
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