By Jung Sung-ki
Staff Reporter
South Korea's military has been placed on high alert after North Korea issued a statement Saturday threatening an ``all-out confrontational posture'' against the South, the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said Sunday.
No unusual activity by the North Korean military has been seen, according to the JCS. The communist state has not taken any action on inter-Korean projects, such as the operation of the Gaeseong Industrial Complex, officials said.
The government will respond calmly to the North's threat, which analysts say is mainly aimed at the new U.S. government to be inaugurated this week, the officials added.
``We've been closely watching North Korea's moves. We will adopt a bold but flexible response instead of counteracting,'' an official of the Ministry of Unification said on condition of anonymity. ``The government has no intention to issue a statement at the moment.''
Another government official said Cheong Wa Dae would take a low-key approach toward Pyongyang's moves.
On Saturday, North Korea's military issued a strongly worded statement vowing to ``swipe out'' the South, criticizing the Lee Myung-bak administration's tougher policy toward the regime.
The General Staff of the North's Korean People's Army insisted that South Korean vessels frequently violated the Northern Limit Line (NLL) in the West Sea, the de facto sea border between the two Koreas.
``Now that traitor Lee Myung-bak and his group opted for confrontation, our revolutionary armed forces are compelled to take an all-out confrontational posture to shatter them.'' a military spokesman read in a statement on a program aired by Pyongyang's official Korean Central Broadcasting Station
It was the first message from the North Korean army's General Staff in 10 years.
The spokesman said the North Korean military would ``preserve'' the western sea border from ``ceaseless intrusions'' by the South.
The NLL, the sea boundary imposed by the United Nations Command at the end of the 1950-53 Korean War, has been a flash point for conflicts between South and North Korea. Pyongyang refuses to accept it as a border, with its vessels violating the line often. Navies from the two Koreas clashed near the border in 1999 and 2002.
Following an emergency meeting with the Ministry of National Defense, the JCS ordered intensified border patrols by the Army, Navy and Air Force against any provocation by the North.
The JCS asked the Korea-U.S. Combined Forces Command to strengthen the command's intelligence gathering and surveillance operations on North Korea, JCS officials said.
Analysts say the North's message aims to raise military tension on the Korean Peninsula to draw attention from Washington ahead of the inauguration of the new U.S. government amid a stalemate over a multilateral denuclearization process regarding Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program.
The North also wants to pressure the South to soften its policy toward North Korea but would not risk actual military action against the South, they say.
``North Korean is well aware that any inter-Korean military conflicts would not help improve its ties with the United States,'' Professor Koh Yu-hwan of Dongguk University in Seoul said. ``There is a possibility about an accidental clash between the two militaries, but I don't believe the North would take intentional military action.''
Inter-Korean relations have been frozen since conservative President Lee Myung-bak took office in Seoul early last year. Lee rolled back his liberal predecessors' engagement policy toward the North and linked major economic assistance to the North's denuclearisation.
Late last year, the North cut off virtually all official contacts with Seoul. The inter-Korean border is tightly sealed and Pyongyang does not allow any cross-border travel by South Korean officials.