N. Korea threatens Seoul with war over military exercises with U.S.

Doug Stanglin | USA TODAY

As the United States and South Korea gear up for next week's annual joint military exercises, North Korea warned Saturday of "all-out military action" unless Seoul cancels the plans and halts its anti-Pyongyang broadcasts along their joint border.

Seoul informed Pyongyang on Saturday that the annual joint exercises, which North Korea has long condemned as a rehearsal for war, will be held Aug. 17-28.

The United Nations Command informed North Korea of the plan through a loudspeaker at Panmunjom, the truce village inside the demilitarized zone, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported.

In a statement carried by the North's official Korean Central News Agency, an unnamed spokesman for the National Defense Commission threatened to take "the strongest military counteraction."

"The DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) is the invincible power equipped with both the latest offensive and defensive means unknown to the world, including nuclear deterrence," the spokesman said.

South Korea resumed its anti-Pyongyang broadcasts Monday in response to a land mine explosion inside the demilitarized zone between the two countries that left two South Korean soldiers severely injured, Yonhap reported.

North Korea has dismissed as "absurd" charges that it had planted the devices. “If our military wanted a provocation for a military purpose, we would have used our mighty firepower instead of fiddling with three land mines,” North Korean authorities said, according to the Korea Joongang Daily.

In a separate "open warning" issued by North Korea's military leadership, Pyongyang demanded that South Korea remove all means of "psychological warfare" or face "all-out military action."

"If they turn down the demand of the DPRK, it would start an all-out military action of justice to blow up all means for 'anti-North psychological warfare' in all areas along the front," the North's command said in a statement carried by Korean Central News Agency.

"All means used for 'anti-North psychological warfare,' whether they are fixed or mobile, will never escape the strike of the KPA (Korean People's Army). They should not forget that the KPA military action means indiscriminate strikes which envisage even possible challenge and escalating counteraction," it said.

The latest saber-rattling coincides with reports that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un ordered the execution of the country's vice premier earlier this year. Citing unnamed sources, Yonhap reported that Choe Yong-gon, 63, was shot dead in May after expressing "discomfort" over Kim's forestation policy.

In another apparent purge, senior officials from Seoul’s National Intelligence Service told South Korean lawmakers in a closed hearing in May that North Korea’s defense minister, Hyon Yong Chol, was executed by anti-aircraft fire for disloyalty and showing disrespect to dictator Kim, The Wall Street Journal reported.

An unidentified official with South Korea's NIS later told CNN that while the agency was sure Hyon had been "purged," it had not confirmed whether he had been executed.

In any case, North Korea, in reporting last month on a routine military meeting, referred to Pak Yong Sik as defense minister, indicating a change at the top of the defense structure, according to CNN.

Complicating relations at this tense moment is North Korea's sudden move to turn back its clocks by 30 minutes for what it described as ridding itself of the legacy of Japan's 1910-45 colonial rule of Korea. The time change went into effect Saturday on the anniversary of Japan's surrender in World War II.

South Korean officials have expressed concern the move will complicate inter-Korean affairs, particularly movements in and out of the joint industrial complex in North Korea's border city of Kaesong, according to Yonhap. It could also create confusion in messages exchanged between their respective militaries.