North Korea threatens 'sea of fire'
North Korea denied today that it ever admitted that it had a secret nuclear weapons programme and said it would unleash a “sea of fire” if the United States persists in challenging the communist country.
The warning came just hours ahead of a much-anticipated visit to South Korea by US Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly.
Mr Kelly arrived in Seoul today for talks with President-elect Roh Moo-hyun and other officials.
Washington and its allies are intensifying efforts to find a diplomatic solution to the escalating crisis with North Korea.
Mr Kelly will also travel to China, Singapore, Indonesia and Japan.
The day before, North Korea sent sharply mixed messages, vowing to “smash US nuclear maniacs” in a “holy war”, while its diplomats told an American governor in the United States that their country had no intention of building nuclear bombs.
In October, the United States announced the North had admitted having an atomic weapons programme while Mr Kelly was in Pyongyang for talks.
Such a programme would violate a 1994 accord with the United States, which pledged North Korea energy supplies if it froze operations at its nuclear facilities. Washington retaliated last month by halting oil shipments promised under the deal.
North Korea appeared to backtrack today.
“The claim that we admitted developing nuclear weapons is an invention fabricated by the US with sinister intentions,” the official Rodong Sinmun newspaper said.
The newspaper blamed the United States for the current crisis and warned: “If the United States evades its responsibility and challenges us, we’ll turn the citadel of imperialists into a sea of fire.”
When negotiators were hammering out the 1994 accord – over similar concerns about North Korea’s nuclear intentions – Pyongyang also warned that it would turn the South Korean capital of Seoul into a “sea of fire”.
The United States believes North Korea has one or two nuclear weapons and could make several more within six months if it reactivates a plutonium reprocessing plant.
Yesterday, a North Korean official said that the plant north of Pyongyang was ready for operation.
Pyongyang further upped the stakes by threatening to resume long-range missile tests.
The day before, the isolated communist country withdrew from the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty.
South Korea vowed again today to pursue a diplomatic solution, after National Security Adviser Yim Sung-joon returned from a visit to Washington and Tokyo.
“The government’s consistent position is that it will do its best to resolve the North Korean nuclear issue peacefully through diplomacy,” Yim told South Korea’s Yonhap news agency.
North Korea’s defiance has been building for weeks but intensified yesterday when a series of leaders issued anti-American diatribes at a rally of one million people in the nation’s capital.
One vowed that the North would seek ”revenge with blood” towards any country that violates its sovereignty.
The threat of new missile tests came from the North’s ambassador to China, Choe Jin Su, who said tests could resume if US relations do not improve.
New tests would be the first since 1998, when North Korea fired a missile over Japan into the Pacific. Pyongyang later set a moratorium on tests which was to last into 2004.
Since the nuclear standoff resumed, the North has removed seals placed on one of its nuclear facilities by IAEA monitors and expelled two UN inspectors.
