[Yonhap News Photo]
North Korea threatened Monday to take "merciless" action in its first official reaction to a US-South Korean agreement to push ahead with the controversial deployment of an advanced US missile system on the Korean peninsula.
The threat came three days after Seoul and Washington agreed to deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system aimed at intercepting North Korean ballistic missiles. The allies said they were in the final stage of setting the site for the deployment of a THAAD battery.
The North's army artillery bureau warned in a statement published by Pyongyang's official Korean Central News Agency that it would take unspecified "physical" action to neutralize the THAAD system the moment the site for its deployment is decided.
Military facilities and logistics bases in South Korea are within the range of "precision" strikes, the statement said. "Our military ... is determined to launch a merciless retaliatory strike and turn them into a sea of fire and ashes," it said, insisting the THAAD battery revealed Washington's "heinous" scheme to check superpowers around the peninsula.
South Korea and the US said the missile shield is defensive in nature and would only target North Korea, but Russia and China argued it may expedite an arms race and undermine the region's strategic balance.
Aju News Lim Chang-won = cwlim34@ajunews.com
reporter
Park Sae-jin
swatchsjp@ajunews.com
