SEOUL - North Korea threatened to attack rival South Korea if
Seoul joined a new round of tightened U.N. sanctions, as Washington
unveiled more of its own economic restrictions following Pyongyang's
rocket launch last month.
In a third straight
day of fiery rhetoric against regional powers, the North directed its
verbal onslaught at its neighbor on Friday, saying: "'Sanctions' mean a
war and a declaration of war against us."
The
reclusive North has this week declared a boycott of all dialogue aimed
at ending its nuclear program and vowed to conduct more rocket and
nuclear tests after the Security Council censured it for a December
long-range missile launch.
"If the puppet group
of traitors takes a direct part in the U.N. 'sanctions,' the DPRK will
take strong physical counter-measures against it," the North's Committee
for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea said, referring to the South.
The committee is the North's front for dealings with the South. DPRK is
short for the North's official name, the Democratic People's Republic
of Korea.
The U.N. Security Council unanimously
condemned North Korea's December rocket launch on Tuesday and expanded
existing U.N. sanctions.
On Thursday, the United
States slapped economic sanctions on two North Korean bank officials
and a Hong Kong trading company that it accused of supporting
Pyongyang's proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
The company, Leader (Hong Kong) International Trading Ltd, was separately blacklisted by the United Nations on Wednesday.
Seoul has said it will look at whether there are any further sanctions
that it can implement alongside the United States, but said the focus
for now is to follow Security Council resolutions.
The resolution said the council "deplores the violations" by North
Korea of its previous resolutions, which banned Pyongyang from
conducting further ballistic missile and nuclear tests and from
importing materials and technology for those programs. It does not
impose new sanctions on Pyongyang.
The United
States had wanted to punish North Korea for the rocket launch with a
Security Council resolution that imposed entirely new sanctions against
Pyongyang, but Beijing rejected that option. China agreed to U.N.
sanctions against Pyongyang after North Korea's 2006 and 2009 nuclear
tests.
Nuclear test worry
North Korea's rhetoric this week amounted to some of the angriest
outbursts against the outside world coming under the leadership of Kim
Jong-un, who took over after the death of his father Kim Jong-il in late
2011.
On Thursday, the North said it would
carry out further rocket launches and a nuclear test, directing its ire
at the United States, a country it called its "sworn enemy."
U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said the comments were worrying.
"We are very concerned with North Korea's continuing provocative behavior," he said at a Pentagon news conference.
"We are fully prepared ... to deal with any kind of provocation from
the North Koreans. But I hope in the end that they determine that it is
better to make a choice to become part of the international family."
North Korea is not believed to have the technology to deliver a nuclear
warhead capable of hitting the continental United States, although its
December launch showed it had the capacity to deliver a rocket that
could travel 10,000 km (6,200 miles), potentially putting San Francisco
in range, according to an intelligence assessment by South Korea.
South Korea and others who have been closely observing activities at
the North's known nuclear test grounds believe Pyongyang is technically
ready to go ahead with its third atomic test and awaiting the political
decision of its leader.
The North's committee
also declared on Friday that a landmark agreement it signed with the
South in 1992 on eliminating nuclear weapons from the Korean peninsula
was invalid, repeating its long-standing accusation that Seoul was
colluding with Washington.
China, the North's
sole remaining major diplomatic and economic benefactor, has urged calm
to stop the situation from deteriorating further, but an unusually
prickly comments in a state publication on Friday underlined its
exasperation.
"It seems that North Korea does
not appreciate China's efforts," said the Global Times in an editorial, a
sister publication of the official People's Daily.
"Just let North Korea be 'angry' ... China hopes for a stable
peninsula, but it's not the end of the world if there's trouble there.
This should be the baseline of China's position." — Reuters
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