SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea on Thursday threatened for the first time to launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike against the United States and South Korea, issuing the warning as the United Nations was preparing tough new sanctions over its nuclear program.
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The threat from the North Korean Foreign Ministry came hours before the United Nations Security Council was scheduled to meet to on the sanctions, which are aimed at squeezing the international financing of the already isolated regime in Pyongyang.
Calling such sanctions "an act of war," North Korea has sharply escalated its rhetoric against the United States and its allies in the last few days, declaring the 1953 armistice that stopped the Korean War null and void and threatening to turn Washington and Seoul into "a sea in flames" with "lighter and smaller nukes."
The combative country had often warned that it had the right to launch pre-emptive military strikes against the United States, which it claimed was preparing to start a war on the Korean Peninsula. On Thursday, it ratcheted up its hostile language by talking about pre-emptive nuclear strikes for the first time.
“Since the United States is about to ignite a nuclear war, our revolutionary armed forces will be exercising our right to pre-emptive nuclear attack against the strongholds of aggressors in order to protect our supreme interest,” a spokesman of the North Korean Foreign Ministry said in a Korean-language statement carried by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency.
The spokesman said that North Korea was no longer bound by the armistice ending the Korean War - and its military was free to take "self-defensive military actions at any target any time" - starting from Monday, when it declared the cease-fire terminated.
The United Nations’ sanctions "will advance the second and third counter-measures of stronger intensity we have already declared," the spokesman added, without elaborating.
North Korea had earlier vowed to take such unspecified retaliatory steps if the Security Council imposed more sanctions against the country for its third nuclear test on Feb. 12.
[h=4]Connect With Us on Twitter[/h] Follow @nytimesworld for international breaking news and headlines.
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The threat from the North Korean Foreign Ministry came hours before the United Nations Security Council was scheduled to meet to on the sanctions, which are aimed at squeezing the international financing of the already isolated regime in Pyongyang.
Calling such sanctions "an act of war," North Korea has sharply escalated its rhetoric against the United States and its allies in the last few days, declaring the 1953 armistice that stopped the Korean War null and void and threatening to turn Washington and Seoul into "a sea in flames" with "lighter and smaller nukes."
The combative country had often warned that it had the right to launch pre-emptive military strikes against the United States, which it claimed was preparing to start a war on the Korean Peninsula. On Thursday, it ratcheted up its hostile language by talking about pre-emptive nuclear strikes for the first time.
“Since the United States is about to ignite a nuclear war, our revolutionary armed forces will be exercising our right to pre-emptive nuclear attack against the strongholds of aggressors in order to protect our supreme interest,” a spokesman of the North Korean Foreign Ministry said in a Korean-language statement carried by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency.
The spokesman said that North Korea was no longer bound by the armistice ending the Korean War - and its military was free to take "self-defensive military actions at any target any time" - starting from Monday, when it declared the cease-fire terminated.
The United Nations’ sanctions "will advance the second and third counter-measures of stronger intensity we have already declared," the spokesman added, without elaborating.
North Korea had earlier vowed to take such unspecified retaliatory steps if the Security Council imposed more sanctions against the country for its third nuclear test on Feb. 12.