SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea welcomed the new year Saturday with a push for better ties with rival South Korea, warning that war “will bring nothing but a nuclear holocaust.”
Despite calls in its annual New Year’s message for a Korean peninsula free of nuclear weapons, the North, which has conducted two nuclear tests since 2006, also said its military was ready for “prompt, merciless and annihilatory action” against its enemies.
The North’s holiday message — scrutinized by officials and analysts in neighboring countries for policy clues — comes in the wake of its Nov. 23 artillery attack on a front-line South Korean island near the countries’ disputed western sea border.
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