N. Korea declares 'all-out confrontation' as S. Korea-U.S. war drill nears

By Kim Hyun

SEOUL, Feb. 19 (Yonhap) -- North Korea warned on Thursday that South Korea and the United States will pay a "high price" if they go ahead with their planned joint war drills, saying it is ready for an all-out war.

A day earlier, the two allies said they will hold their annual military exercise
from March 9-20 across South Korea. Pyongyang has denounced such drills as
preparations for preemptive strikes, while the allies say they are purely
defensive.
The upcoming training comes amid mounting tension on the peninsula, with North
Korea suspected of preparing to test-launch a long-range missile.
"The Lee Myung-bak group ... should never forget that the Korean People's Army is
fully ready for an all-out confrontation," a spokesman for the North's Army
General Staff said.
The military also claimed nuclear and missile threats reported to be posed by
North Korea are "non-existent."
Earlier this week, North Korea insisted it is working on "space development,"
denying reports of missile test preparations. In 1998, Pyongyang claimed it
launched a satellite into orbit. In 2006, it tested a long-range Taepodong 2
missile, but it fizzled about 40 seconds after blast-off.
"Traitor Lee and his group, far from drawing a proper lesson from the serious
crisis caused by their treachery, are more frantically inciting hostility toward
the DPRK and kicking up anti-DPRK war hysteria under that pretext," the spokesman
said. DPRK stands for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the North's
official name.
"But they will only meet the merciless and stern punishment by the army and
people," it said.
By saying the military is now ready for war, the latest warning took a step
further a Jan. 17 statement, in which the military spokesman said Pyongyang's
forces "are compelled to take" an all-out confrontational posture against Seoul's
conservative government.
North Korea promptly responded after South Korea and the U.S. announced their
"defense-oriented" drills in March.
The Key Resolve and Foal Eagle exercise will be based on OPLAN 5027, a war plan
that allows the U.S. to take command of the combined forces upon North Korean
invasion.
The U.S. and South Korea "will be forced to pay a high price for this, as it goes
against peace and against the times," the North's Korean Central News Agency said
on Thursday.
About 28,500 U.S. troops are stationed in South Korea, a legacy of the 1950-53
Korean War that ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty.
The North also renewed its warning of naval clashes along the western sea border,
along which two bloody skirmishes occurred in the past decade, leaving scores of
soldiers dead and wounded on both sides.
"Inter-Korean relations are at their worst crisis," Radio Pyongyang said. "A
dangerous situation is arising in the western sea and the regions where the two
sides are in standoff ... one does not know when military clashes will occur."
The Northern Limit Line in the Yellow Sea was drawn unilaterally by the U.N.
Command after the Korean War. Pyongyang has insisted it should be redrawn further
south.