North Korea says it will view any pre-emptive strike by South Korea as declaration of war

NKorea: Pre-emptive strike from South would be war

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea warned Sunday it would consider any pre-emptive strike by South Korea a declaration of war — the latest salvo in a battle of rhetoric even as the rival nations showed signs of cooperating after months of tension over the North’s nuclear program.

The North’s military also said it would take prompt and decisive military action against any South Korean attempt to violate North Korea’s dignity and sovereignty and would blow up major targets in the South.

The two Koreas technically remain at war because the Korean conflict ended with a 1953 cease-fire that has never been replaced with a peace treaty.

“Our revolutionary armed forces will regard the scenario for ‘pre-emptive strike,’ which the South Korean puppet authorities adopted as a ’state policy,’ as an open declaration of war,” the General Staff of the Korean People’s Army said in a statement carried by the country’s official Korean Central News Agency.

The North’s warning came in response to the South Korean defense minister’s remarks last week that the South should launch a pre-emptive strike on North Korea if there was a clear indication the country was preparing a nuclear attack.

Yet the North’s military also renewed in Sunday’s statement the country’s commitment to improve inter-Korean relations in an apparent gesture to try to win economic aid from the South.

The isolated communist regime has been sending conflicting signals, issuing tough statements even as it has reached out to the U.S. and South Korea in recent months in what could be an attempt to ease some of the pressure of U.N. sanctions imposed on the North after it conducted a nuclear test last year, its second to date.

The North recently threatened to break off dialogue and attack South Korea in response to media reports that Seoul had assembled a contingency plan to handle any unrest in the North.

Still, last week, the two Koreas held talks on developing their joint industrial complex in the North’s border city of Kaesong, the most prominent symbol of inter-Korean cooperation.

On Friday, the North offered to hold discussions between military officers in Kaesong this week to discuss border crossings, customs, and the use of mobile phones and the Internet for South Korean companies in the complex.

“We are reviewing the proposal,” South Korea’s Unification Ministry spokesman Chun Hae-sung said Saturday. It is not unusual for both sides to take a few days to reply to requests from the other.

More than 110 South Korean factories at Kaesong employ some 42,000 North Korean workers to make everything from electronics and watches to shoes and utensils, providing a major source of revenue for the cash-strapped North.