North Korea followed recent conciliatory gestures toward the US and South Korea with a return to threats yesterday, warning them of “merciless retaliation” over sanctions imposed on its government, as well as nuclear attacks in response to any atomic threats.
Seoul and Washington will kick off annual computer-simulated war games today, which North Korea sees as preparations for an invasion. The US and South Korea say the maneuvers are purely defensive.
“Should the US imperialists and [South Korean government] threaten the [North] with nukes, it will retaliate against them with nukes,” the North Korean military said in a statement reported yesterday by the Korean Central News Agency.
Despite North Korea’s recent conciliatory gestures of freeing two detained US journalists and a South Korean worker, tensions continue on the divided Korean Peninsula, mainly over the North’s nuclear program.
The US is moving to enforce UN as well as its own sanctions against North Korea to punish it for its second nuclear test in May and a series of missile launches.
The UN sanctions strengthened an arms embargo and authorized ship searches on the high seas to try to rein in the North’s nuclear program. They also ordered an asset freeze and travel ban on companies and individuals linked to the program.
If the US and South Korea “tighten sanctions and push confrontation to an extreme phase, the [North] will react to them with merciless retaliation ... and an all-out war of justice,” the North Korean military statement said.
A US special envoy responsible for implementing the sanctions plans to visit Singapore, Thailand, South Korea and Japan this week and could travel later this month to China.
Philip Goldberg told reporters last week the measures against North Korea will continue until it takes irreversible steps to scrap its nuclear program.
On Saturday, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak renewed an offer of aid to North Korea and called for a “candid dialogue” with the North about dismantling its nuclear programs so it can prosper economically.
It was unclear if the aid offer — which has strings attached — would prod North Korea to back down from its promise to restart its nuclear program. Lee has made similar aid offers in the past, but the North has rejected them.
For years, South Korea had been one of North Korea’s biggest benefactors, but since taking office early last year, Lee suspended unconditional aid to the impoverished North as part of a new harder-line approach. The North responded by cutting most ties and curtailing key joint projects.
Lee also offered talks on reducing conventional arms and troops along the mine-strewn demilitarized zone, a 4km-wide buffer bisecting the Korean peninsula.
South and North Korea have hundreds of thousands of combat-ready troops and heavy artillery along the 250km border. About 28,500 US troops are stationed in South Korea as a legacy of the 1950-1953 Korean War, which ended in a ceasefire, not a peace treaty, leaving the two Koreas technically still at war.
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