The North Korean military threatened immediate retaliation on Tuesday if the United States imposes sanctions or sea or air blockades against the communist state.
The warning, issued as a statement from North Korea’s military at the border village of Panmunjom, was carried by Pyongyang’s official KCNA news agency and monitored by South Korea’s Yonhap news service.
Stating that it was ”hardly possible to preserve the ceasefire in Korea by the unilateral efforts of the Korean People’s Army”, North Koran military said the peninsula stood ”at the crossroads of war or peace”.
The statement said that any imposition of sanctions ”a complete breach of the Armistice Agreement” that ended the 1953 Korean War, and would be met by ”merciless retaliatory measures”.
It also reiterated earlier statements blaming the United States for taking a hostile stance towards North Korea over its suspected nuclear weapons programme.
On Friday, North Korean Foreign Minister Paek Nam Sun delivered a letter to the United Nations Security Council warning of war if the United States imposed a blockade against North Korea.
Both Koreas are formally in a state of war because no peace treaty has been formulated. Analysts believe that North Korea’s actions are designed to move the United States to agree to bilateral negotiations over the conflict.
The US has stressed that it wants to settle the dispute diplomatically through multilateral talks. Meanwhile, the US was accused in another KCNA report of 200
cases of flying intelligence gathering aircraft over ”strategic targets” in North Korea. – Sapa-DPA