By Lee Tae-hoon, Park Si-soo
Staff reporters
North Korea threatened to fire at South Korean loudspeakers along the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) and destroy them, Monday, if Seoul resumes propaganda broadcasting suspended since 2004.
"If South Korea installs new speakers for psychological warfare, we will directly aim at them and open fire to destroy them," an unnamed North Korean military commander said in a statement, carried by Pyongyang's official Korean Central News Agency.
"If the South Korean traitors challenge our rightful response, we will counter with mightier physical strikes to eliminate the root cause of their provocation," the statement said.
The North's threat came shortly after Seoul announced a set of measures against Pyongyang, holding it accountable for the March 26 sinking of a South Korean warship that took the lives of 46 sailors.
Defense Minister Kim Tae-young said, along with other measures, the South would restart psychological operations against the communist North, including loud broadcasts of propaganda along the DMZ.
Kim warned of counter attacks if the North fires at the speakers.
"If the North disrupts our psychological warfare by opening fire at loudspeakers, we will counterattack immediately," the minister affirmed during a session at the National Assembly.
The North Korean commander noted that propaganda slogans had already appeared on the South's side of the border, and the South's military was moving to set up new speakers.
"This is a serious military provocation and a breach of the inter-Korean military agreement. This is also a grave matter that will lead inter-Korean relations to their worst ever," he said.
According to the Rodong Sinmun, an organ of the North's Workers' Party, the South's government is making fictitious allegations of a torpedo attack to distract attention from its domestic politics.
"It will come to clearly realize what disastrous consequences will be entailed by its smear campaign and frantic racket of confrontation and war against North Korea," the paper said.
The North's Foreign Ministry also expressed Pyongyang's unwillingness to abandon its nuclear programs on the state-run television
"We have the right to have as many nuclear deterrents and increase them to protect the nation's rights," a spokesman for the ministry said.
He argued that the North is not obliged to dismantle its nuclear program as it has already withdrawn from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
"A clause of the NPT states that a member state can bolt from it, if the nation's vested interests are threatened," he said.
The two Koreas technically remain at war, as the 1950-53 Korean War ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty.
leeth@koreatimes.co.kr
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