TOKYO, May 27 — North Korea vowed Wednesday to attack South Korea if its ships are searched as part a U.S.-led effort to interdict vessels carrying missiles or weapons of mass destruction. It also declared that the truce that ended the Korean War was no longer valid.
“Those who provoke [North Korea] once will not be able to escape its unimaginable and merciless punishment,” the North’s official news agency said.
The threat brought a strong rebuke in Washington. At a news conference, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton reaffirmed U.S. commitments to the defense of Japan and South Korea and said North Korea’s “belligerent” actions will bring consequences, although she did not specify any. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs also said that North Korea’s action is deepening its isolation and that the administration is looking “to ensure that they’re not moving material that could be used to produce a weapon of mass destruction.”
The North Korean threat — unusually broad and bellicose, even by North Korean standards — came three days after the reclusive communist state was condemned by the international community, including longtime allies China and Russia, for testing a second nuclear device in violation of U.N. resolutions. Since Monday, the North has also launched five short-range missiles into the sea off its eastern coast.
The nuclear test pushed South Korea on Tuesday to join the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), which was created in 2003 by President George W. Bush and includes more than 90 countries that have agreed to stop and inspect suspicious cargo ships.
For months North Korea, which is widely suspected of violating U.N. resolutions by shipping missiles to customers in East Asia and the Middle East, has said it would regard the South’s membership in the anti-proliferation program as an “act of war.”
As threatened, the government of Kim Jong Il rolled out a multi-pronged counter-attack in response to South Korea’s decision. So far, it remains rhetorical.
North Korea said it could no longer guarantee the safety of ships from South Korea and other countries sailing in the Yellow Sea off its western border.
It added that it would not honor a North-South border in that sea, which was drawn up at the end of the Korean War in 1953. The North also said it would not respect the legal status of five islands on the South’s side of the line.
Two naval clashes occurred in that area of the Yellow Sea in 1999 and 2002, resulting in the deaths of six sailors from South Korea and more than 30 from North Korea. In those skirmishes, North Korea was badly outgunned by the South’s more modern weapons.
The armistice that ended the Korean War bans a naval blockade, and North Korea claimed Wednesday that the South had nullified the agreement by joining the anti-proliferation effort.
Since “the U.S. imperialists and the [South Korean President] Lee Myung-bak group of traitors have reneged” on the armistice, North Korea said it is no longer obligated to obey international law or abide by bilateral agreements.
Full article on Washington Post.
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