North Korea says/does surprising and alarming thing - Page…

North Korea's armed forces are reported to be awaiting a "final order" from the country's supreme leader Kim Jong-un before launching a campaign against South Korea.

Ahead of a ten-day joint computer-simulated drill to be conducted by the US and South Korea on 11 March, the North's most widely circulated mouthpiece Rodong Sinmun said: "Our front-line military groups, the army, the navy and the air force, the anti-aircraft units and the strategic rocket units, who have entered the final all-out war stage, are awaiting the final order to strike."

The mouthpiece said the North's nuclear weapons are also in full readiness.

"Puppet regimes in the US and South Korea will be turned into a sea of fire in the blink of an eye," said the daily, raising tensions further in the Korean peninsula.

South Korea and the US have been conducting a joint field training exercise codenamed Foal Eagle since 1 March, and this is likely to go on until the end of April.

Nearly 10,000 South Korean troops and 3,500 American forces along with fighter planes are involved in the manoeuvres.

South Korea says the exercises are intended to secure its territories, but Pyongyang charges that they are aimed at the North.

The North has also announced that it will conduct a two-day nationwide military exercise in response to the US-South Korea drill.

Local reports suggest that Kim has also been visiting strategically important military installations in the country in the wake of the volatile situation.

A military source in Seoul has told the Yonhap news agency that Pyongyang is likely to fire short-range missiles or resort to other forms of attack during the drill. The source vowed to retaliate with greater force if South Korean sovereignty is violated.

SEOUL, March 10 (Yonhap) -- South Korea's military is preparing against unexpected military provocations by North Korea, a Seoul official said, as the communist country ratcheted up threats of a nuclear war ahead of a joint South Korea-U.S military drill.

"North Korea may possibly provoke at a time in a place we can never expect," like guerrilla attacks in cyberspace, at the sea border or even at the military demarcation line, the military official said.

South Korea’s Defense Ministry Spokesman, Kim Min-seok confirmed on Monday that North Korea has cut off a Red Cross hotline with South Korea, as it escalates its war of words against Seoul and Washington in response to a military drill in the South and U.N. sanctions imposed for its recent nuclear test.

The North had threatened to cut off the hotline on March 11th if the United States and South Koreadid not abandon their joint military exercise.

The Red Cross hotline is used to communicate between Seoul and Pyongyang which do not have diplomatic relations.
Pyongyang has also threatened to cut off a hotline with U.N. forces in South Korea, at the border "truce village" of Pammunjom.

Tensions on the Korean peninsula have risen since the North conducted a third nuclear test on February 12, prompting new U.N. sanctions.

Kim added that South Korea's military was prepared and “ready to immediately strike back if the North provokes.”
South Korea and U.S. forces are conducting large-scale military drills until the end of April, while the North is also gearing up for a massive state-wide military exercise.

North Korea has accused the United States of using the military drills in South Korea as a launch pad for a nuclear war and has threatened to scrap the armistice with Washington that ended hostilities in the 1950-53 Korean War.

The North has threatened a nuclear strike on the United States, but such a threat has been dismissed as rhetoric by analysts, as the North does not have the military capacity to reach the United States.
The North is viewed as more likely to stage some kind of attack along a disputed sea border, if it does anything at all, rather than risk a war with South Korea and the United States, which it would lose, according to most military assessments.