North Korea on Wednesday threatened military action against Seoul, one day after South Korea joined a US-led initiative to intercept ships carrying illicit weapons, further escalating tensions on the Korean Peninsula. The Stalinist state said it felt no longer bound by the Korean War armistice and would respond militarily to any foreign attempt to inspect its ships.
In a statement carried by the state-run Korean Central News Agency, the North Korean army accused South Korea's president of treason and said: "As declared to the world, our revolutionary forces will consider the full participation in the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) by the Lee Myung Bak group of traitors as a declaration of war against us."
The security of South Korean and US ships along the western inter-Korean sea border in the Yellow Sea could no longer be guaranteed, North Korea added. With the armistice revoked, the peninsula would soon be returned "to a state of war," the North's military mission to the joint security area in the Korean Demilitarised Zone said.
On Tuesday, Seoul formally joined the PSI initiative to stop ships on the high seas suspected of carrying contraband weapons of mass destruction, a day after Pyongyang carried out its second nuclear test. Seoul had previously hesitated to join, saying the move could create unnecessary tension with North Korea, which is under suspicion of trafficking weapons, drugs and counterfeit money and is a prime target of the PSI.
"Any hostile act against our peaceful vessels, including search and seizure, will be considered an unpardonable infringement on our sovereignty, and we will immediately respond with a powerful military strike," a North Korean army spokesman was quoted as saying by the country's official news agency.
North and South Korea are still technically at war after a cease-fire and not a peace treaty ended the 1950-53 Korean War. North Korea has repeatedly threatened, particularly at times of rising tension, to withdraw from the armistice. In a related development, Pyongyang fired a short-range missile Wednesday across the Sea of Japan, its fifth such launch since Monday's nuclear test, which was unanimously condemned by the UN Security Council in New York.
North Korea also appears to have restarted its nuclear reprocessing facility at Yongbyon, 100 kilometres north of Pyongyang, to produce weapons-grade plutonium. Analysis of satellite images indicated that the facility, which had been mothballed by North Korea after a denuclearization deal signed in February 2007, has been restarted, South Korea's Chosun Ilbo newspaper said, quoting informed sources.
A site where the North stored the spent fuel rods was opened several times in April and, since early May, steam has been rising from the fuel-production plant, the South's Yonhap news agency quoted an unidentified source as saying. Pyongyang announced in April that it had rekindled reprocessing plutonium from spent fuel rods after criticism by the Security Council of a North Korean rocket launch on April 5. Despite international warnings, the North carried out that launch, which was criticised as being a test of its long-range ballistic missile technology.
Meanwhile, in New York, Russia's ambassador to the United Nations said Moscow, a traditional ally of North Korea, plans to support a tough resolution against its nuclear test while saying it was still too early to discuss details. The UN Security Council planned further negotiations Wednesday in New York, Japanese Ambassador Yukio Takasu said.
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