MOSCOW, 21 July (RIA Novosti) – North Korea has threatened to retaliate against the United States and South Korea if they continue pestering Pyongyang over its recent missile test-launches it described as “routine drills,” North Korea’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said on Monday.
“The more desperately the US and the South Korean authorities resort to gangster-like hostile acts, the more deadly retaliatory actions of Korean style they will face,” KCNA cited the North's powerful National Defense Commission (NDC) as saying in its English-language report.
The NDC said it had gone to great lengths to promote inter-Korean ties. “What remains to be done at present is to make a final choice,” it emphasized.
The North’s powerful defense authority admitted that the North Korean Army’s strategic force units and other ground, naval and air and anti-aircraft units had recently conducted “a series of drills with various missions under the conditions of an actual war to bolster up the capability for self-defense such as the ones for ultra-precision tactical rocket firing and firing drills of diverse artillery pieces.”
Seoul and its allies in Washington responded by accusing Pyongyang of trying to escalate tension in the region, with the US State Department describing the launches as “a troubling and provocative escalation,” while Seoul said it was a “grave provocation” and warned China and Russia they could also come under North Korea’s missile attack.
“The US and the South Korean authorities should no longer behave recklessly, daring talk about 'provocation' and 'threat' from someone,” KCNA wrote in the report.
This came after North Korea last week fired a barrage of some one hundred artillery shells off its eastern coast, according to the South’s Yonhap news agency that cited a military source in Seoul.
A day before that, Seoul also claimed that Pyongyang launched two short-range rockets that flew about 500 kilometers before plunging into the Sea of Japan.
