“If there is any provocation against South Korea and its people, there should be a strong response in initial combat without any political considerations,” Park said at a meeting with the country’s senior military and security officials on Monday.
The President also said that she “sees the recent (North Korea’s) threats very seriously.”
South Korean Defense Minister Kim Kwan-Jin also said at the meeting that Seoul would target the North’s nuclear and missile facilities if hostilities erupted.
“We will… establish a so-called ‘active deterrence’ aimed at neutralizing the North’s nuclear and missile threats quickly,” the minister said.
The remarks came a day after the United States sent F-22 stealth fighter jets to South Korea in order to join military drills with Seoul amid escalating tensions on the Korean Peninsula.
On Saturday, Pyongyang announced that it is in a “state of war” with South Korea, warning that any provocation by Seoul and Washington will trigger an all-out nuclear war.
Pyongyang said henceforth “the North-South relations will be entering a state of war and all issues raised between the North and the South will be handled accordingly.”
Pyongyang also warned that if Washington and Seoul launched a preemptive attack, the conflict “will not be limited to a local war, but develop into an all-out war, a nuclear war.”
The warnings came days after South Korea and the US signed a new military pact in response to what they called even low-level provocations by Pyongyang.
On March 11, Seoul and Washington launched a week-long annual joint military maneuver near the Korean Peninsula despite warnings from Pyongyang. The maneuver involved 10,000 South Korean soldiers and about 3,000 US troops.
SAB/JR
Source Article from http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/04/01/296047/seoul-warns-n-korea-of-strong-response/
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