North Korean officials said they would “extinguish the [U.S.] aggressors” if the United States deploys Aegis destroyers to the Sea of Japan as part of President Bush’s proposed national missile defense plan.
They also promised South Korea “ruin and death” if the country buys into the U.S. defense plan.
The threats were aired in North Korean reports monitored in Seoul.
The threats came two days after Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage left Seoul after explaining Bush’s missile defense plan to South Korean officials. The South Koreans said they were pleased that Washington was consulting with its allies, but urged caution in developing and deploying the system.
Seoul has not announced an official position on the plan, which Bush said will offer protection to both the United States and its allies.
Armitage told South Korean officials that two U.S. Aegis destroyers might be stationed in the Sea of Japan as part of the defense plan. Radio Pyongyang on Sunday called that a “provocative and confrontational” move “that invites the fiery cloud of war.”
In spite of the North’s continued anti-U.S. and -South Korea rhetoric, a State Department official in Washington said Sunday that the United States soon will send 100,000 tons of food to Pyongyang to help alleviate the North’s chronic food shortage. The aid will be sent through the U.N.’s World Food Program.
News reports from Washington quoted the official as saying that the humanitarian shipment — the first since Bush entered office — “does not mean that we are finished with our policy review with North Korea.”
That review and the fact that North Korea remains on the U.S. list of states that sponsor terrorism has angered North Korean officials, who have resumed demanding that the 37,000 U.S. troops stationed in the South be withdrawn immediately.