YONHAP NEWS

Seoul remains calm despite threats from N. Korea

   SEOUL, March 31 (Yonhap) -- South Korea remained silent Monday to North Korea's provocative threats to turn everything in the country into ashes while officials at the Defense Ministry said they simply see no need to respond to what they called "unfortunate" rhetoric.

   The Defense Ministry was earlier expected to issue a statement, but ministry officials said they were still weighing their options.

   "It truly is unfortunate for North Korea to make such threats, but the government sees no need to be alarmed and make an immediate response," a ministry official said, asking not to be identified.

   Still, the official noted some kind of reaction or a simple statement denouncing the North's latest provocation could become available later Monday or early Tuesday.

   An unidentified North Korean military commentator on Sunday said the communist nation's armed forces would counter "any slightest move" for a preemptive strike by South Korea with more rapid and powerful preemptive strikes.

   "They should bear in mind that once the more powerful preemptive strike of our own mode be launched, it will not merely plunge everything into flames but reduce it to ashes," the North Korean said in a commentary carried by the North's Korean Central News Agency.

   The statement came at the end of a series of threats after Seoul's new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Kim Tae-young, last week said the country would have to incapacitate the North's nuclear facilities if Pyongyang tried to launch a nuclear attack against the South.

   The Joint Chiefs of Staff later explain Kim's remarks, made at a National Assembly confirmation hearing, were only a recitation of a defense manual common to all states, but Pyongyang has repeatedly blasted Kim for making what they called "dangerous" and "treacherous" provocations.

   A spokesman for North Korea's Navy on Friday accused Kim of making "provocative outbursts" and warned South Korea will have to pay a dear price for their continued escalating of tension. The communist nation fired off three short-range missiles earlier that day from a naval ship operating in the West Sea, the site of two deadly clashes in 1999 and 2002.

   "None of these issues are new to either of us (South or North Korea) and that is part of the reason we are not too eager to engage in a debate with the North," the ministry official said.

   The North's military commentator on Sunday also warned all cross-border dialogue between the divided Koreas will be suspended unless Seoul takes back the recent remarks by the JCS chairman and apologize.

   "We, of course, do not want the dialogue to be suspended, but we can only hope the North will not make any more unfortunate decisions," the official said.

   The two Koreas remain divided since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War and are technically at war as the Korean War ended only with a cease-fire, not a peace treaty.

   bdk@yna.co.kr
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