North Korea yesterday blasted South Korea for hosting a multinational naval drill aimed at preventing the transfer of weapons of mass destruction, calling it an “open declaration of war.”
South Korea for the first time played a full part in the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) on Thursday, with warships and aircraft from four countries staging an exercise off the southern port of Busan.
“The [South Korean] puppet regime revealed its criminal plot to ruin the hard-won atmosphere for dialogue and peace and to drive inter-Korean ties to the edge of a war by hosting the PSI,” the North’s Minju Joson daily said.
‘DECLARATION OF WAR’
“This is an outright military provocation and an open declaration of war against us,” the official daily of North Korea said in a commentary, according to Pyongyang’s Korean Central News Agency.
In a separate commentary, the North’s ruling party’s official daily, Rodong Sinmun, said the country would build up its armed forces 1,000-fold should the US continue its military threat against it.
North Korea already has one of the largest standing armies in the world.
The South says the drill does not target specific countries but the Minju Joson said the exercise was aimed at interdicting and searching ships that belong to the North.
About 10 warships and aircraft from South Korea, the US, Japan and Australia took part in the maneuvers.
“A naval blockade, which can be seen only during wartime, must not be tolerated,” the newspaper said, adding the exercise was aimed at “seizing, inspecting and searching our ships and blockading our ports.”
South Korea was previously only an observer in the initiative for fear of offending its northern neighbor. After Pyongyang’s second nuclear test in May last year, it said it would become a full member.
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