In its first response to the recent South Korea-U.S. agreement to extend Seoul's missile capabilities, North Korea on Tuesday slammed the pact as designed to launch an invasion into the communist country, vowing equal retaliation against any attack.
A spokesman for the National Defense Commission reiterated that the U.S. mainland and Guam as well as Japan and South Korea are within the North's range of missile attack.
"We are well prepared to fight with nuclear (weapons) against any nuclear (attacks) by the U.S. and its followers or with missiles against missiles," the spokesman said in a statement carried by the state Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).
The spokesman also vowed to launch all-out efforts to intensify the nation's war preparedness, saying, "We have only resolute actions left as our last option and will show the real bitterness of war that the world has never known or imagined."
The "missile guideline," announced Sunday, allows Seoul to extend the maximum range of its ballistic missiles from the current 300 kilometers to 800 km, a distance long enough to reach the northern tip of North Korea.
Calling the missile agreement "a result of the collusion between a master and a subordinate," the spokesman also said in a separate dispatch carried by the North's mouthpiece Korean Central Television that the pact is aimed at invading the communist country.
"The latest missile policy announcement is designed to bring the condition of the Korean Peninsula to extremes and light the fuse to randomly invade and wage a war with the North," the TV station reported.
The missile agreement made clear the U.S.'s hostile policy stance toward the North, the North said, vowing to toughen its efforts to fight the United States.
Both Koreas remain technically at war as the 1950-53 Korean War ended in a truce not a peace treaty. Having spearheaded the war for the South, the U.S. has often become fodder for the North's campaign of criticism. (Yonhap)