North Korea Warns of Pre-emptive Nuclear Strike Against South Korea
March 31, 2008 by national
Filed under World Report
An escalating war of words across the world’s last Cold War, nuclear-armed border spiraled dramatically yesterday when North Korea threatened to wreak total destruction on its neighbour to the south.
“Our military will not sit idle until warmongers launch a pre-emptive strike,” the official news agency in Pyongyang reported a senior military commander as saing, “everything will be in ashes, not just a sea of fire, if our advanced pre-emptive strike once begins.”
The threat was among the most direct and bellicose statements from Pyongyang since North Korea test-fired an atomic device in late 2006. International efforts since then to persuade the country’s enigmatic dictator, Kim Jong il, to abandon his weapons programme have repeatedly stalled.
The threat also marked a fourth day of rapidly deteriorating relations on the Korean peninsula, which remains technically still at war despite more than 50 years of often uncomfortable armistice.
A note sent by a North Korean military delegation to its South Korean counterpart on Saturday, said that “these outbursts are the gravest challenge ever in the history of the inter-Korean relations and a reckless provocation little short of a war declaration against the DPRK.”
Sunday’s warning followed remarks in Seoul earlier in the weekend in which the head of South Korea’s military vowed to conduct a pre-emptive strike on the suspected North Korean nuclear weapons site if Pyongyang tried to attack with atomic weapons.
The office of the chairman of the South’s joint chiefs of staff later explained that it was a statement of general principles, rather than a hint that the South was planning any unprovoked attack on the North. Pyongyang said that it would suspend all cross-border dialogue unless the remarks were withdrawn and an apology issued.
