North Korea's military threatened to turn South Korea's presidential office into "a sea of fire" in the latest harsh rhetoric to underscore lingering tensions on the divided Korean Peninsula.
The warning came a day after South Korea staged exercises near Yeonpyeong Island to mark the first anniversary of the North's deadly shelling of the South Korean border island.
The attack further aggravated inter-Korean ties that were already badly strained over the sinking early last year of a South Korean warship that was blamed on the North. Fifty South Koreans were killed in the two incidents, mostly soldiers.
The North has refused to take responsibility for the sinking and described the shelling as "a legitimate self-defensive step."
The North's military supreme command denounced South Korea for staging what it says is a war rehearsal against the North, and warned that its armed forces are fully ready for "a decisive battle to counter any military provocation."
If South Korea dares "to impair the dignity of (the North) again and fire one bullet or shell toward its inviolable territorial waters, sky and land, the deluge of fire on Yonphyong Island will lead to that in Chongwadae and the sea of fire in Chongwadae to the deluge of fire sweeping away the stronghold of the group of traitors," the command said in a statement, carried by the official (North) Korean Central News Agency (KCNA). The North spelled both the shelled South Korean island and Cheong Wa Dae, Korea's presidential offices, differently.
The North has made similar threats in recent years. The latest warning comes as South Korea is pushing a flexible policy toward Pyongyang to try to improve their frayed ties.
South Korea's defense ministry said it had no immediate comment on the North's statement.
Also Thursday, the North's Foreign Ministry spokesman rejected a recent U.N. resolution condemning his country's human rights abuses.
"The adoption of the 'resolution' is a trite political trick employed by the U.S. and its followers hostile toward" the North every year, the unidentified spokesman said in comments carried in a separate KCNA dispatch.
He also said the resolution is "the height of politicization, double standards and selection of human rights and consistent with falsity and fabrication."
The angry reaction came just days after the human rights panel of the United Nations General Assembly adopted the resolution as part of annual moves to put pressure on the communist regime.
The resolution denounces the "systemic, widespread violations of human rights" in the North, reportedly including torture, inhumane conditions of detention and the death penalty for political and religious reasons.
North Korea has long been accused of human rights abuses, ranging from holding hundreds of thousands of political prisoners to torture and public executions. Pyongyang has denied the accusations, calling them a U.S.-led attempt to topple its regime.
The U.N. General Assembly is set to vote on the resolution in December. If endorsed, the measure would mark seven consecutive years that the U.N. has adopted a resolution on North Korea's human rights. (Yonhap)