“If North Korea continues its verbal attacks and other provocative acts, we will take a zero tolerance approach”, Na Seng-yong, the spokesman for the defense ministry, said.
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North Korea on Friday paraded a defector accused of involvement in a child abduction plot it says was masterminded by South Korean agents, as Seoul demanded the man’s immediate release.
Nuclear envoys of South Korea and the United States will meet this week to have “in-depth” talks on a wide range of issues, including North Korea’s nuclear and missile threats, Seoul’s foreign ministry said Friday.
The warnings come a day after North Korea condemned the decision to deploy the THAAD system, and call South Korean President Park Geun-hye a “rare traitor” and a “war servant” obsessed with confrontation with the North.
Ko had originally fled North Korea in January 2013 because he had been involved in smuggling and was being investigated by Pyongyang authorities.
“I committed the unpardonable crime of being involved in attempted child abduction”, a weeping Ko said at the event in the People’s Palace of Culture in central Pyongyang.
Pyongyang insists that the women were kidnapped by the South’s spy agency – the National Intelligence Service (NIS) – but Seoul says they fled of their own free will.
Ko was arrested after crossing a river into North Korea from China in May, KCNA said.
“In a statement issued by the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Country of the DPRK, the North’s state committee on inter-Korean affairs, North Korea said, “(Park) must not forget even a moment that the DPRK’s nuclear force for self-defense will be further bolstered in quality and quantity and the merciless sword of justice will cut off her windpipe no matter how desperately she may try to stifle the compatriots in the North by clinging to the coattails of foreign forces”. Many detainees have said after their releases that they were coached or coerced on what to say.
North Korea is also believed to be holding two Americans and a Korean-Canadian.
Ko’s case follows the April defection to the South of a dozen North Korean women working in a restaurant in China.
The U.S. and South Korea announced in February they were formally discussing deploying THAAD and said last week it would place it in South Korea.
The two Koreas are divided along the world’s most heavily fortified border since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War.
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Tensions have been high since Pyongyang carried out its fourth nuclear test in January, followed by a series of missile launches that analysts said showed the North was making progress towards being able to strike the USA mainland.
