His comments came as US and South Korean forces conducted annual military exercises amid heightened tensions on the peninsula after the North’s recent nuclear and missile tests, which prompted the United Nations to impose new sanctions on Pyongyang.
Advertisement
Also Tuesday, Seoul’s spy agency accused North Korea of having hacked into the smartphones of dozens of key South Korean officials, stealing text and voice messages and their phone call logs.
The statement said North Korea also unsuccessfully tried to hack into email accounts of South Korean railway officials earlier this year in a preparation for cyberattack on the South’s railway transport control system.
“If we push the buttons to annihilate the enemies even right now, all bases of provocations will be reduced to seas in flames and ashes in a moment”, the statement added.
The threat came just days after leader Kim Jong-Un ordered the country’s nuclear arsenal to be placed on standby, in response to the sanctions resolution adopted last week by the UN Security Council.
Daniel Pinkston, a Korean who used to be a linguistic with the U.S. Air Force and is now a professor at Seoul’s Troy University, said the threats Pyongyang issued on Monday were not credible at all, according to a report by The Washington Post. North Korea threatened a “preemptive nuclear strike of justice” in retaliation for the joint training exercises. Nonetheless, the United States and South Korea conduct the exercises every year.
North Korea is particularly sensitive to suggestions of attacks on Kim – as the case of the 2014 Hollywood film “The Interview” showed – and it also has a habit of making threats on which it can not follow through. After watching its northern neighbour develop an array of ballistic missiles – and test four nuclear weapons – South Korea has asked America to provide the THAAD system to protect as much of the country as possible.
“China is firmly opposed to any action that causes trouble there and will not accept any troublemaking behavior at our doorstep”, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said at a daily media briefing.
300,000 South Korean soldiers are involved.
Previous year alone, North Korea contaminated some 60,000 personal computers in the South and overseas, turning them into “zombie” PCs that can be used as weapons for cyber attacks, the agency said.
“The real question is going to be whether or not that illegal trade continues and North Korea finds other ways to get the supplies they need”, the former defense secretary said.
The rival Koreas’ usual animosity occasionally erupts in bloody skirmishes – 50 South Koreans were killed in attacks in 2010 that Seoul blames on the North – and there is always a worry about an escalation of violence.
Advertisement
“We do take those threats seriously and again call on Pyongyang to cease with the provocative rhetoric, cease with the threats and, quite frankly more critically, cease the provocative behavior”, State Department spokesman John Kirby said on Monday.
