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SEOUL.  — North Korea said yesterday its military would be put on high alert and be ready to launch operations, stepping up tension after weeks of rhetoric against the United States and South Korea, whom it accuses of instigating hostility. Reclusive North Korea has often issued threats to attack the South and the United States but has rarely turned them into action.
Such hostile rhetoric is widely seen as a way to push its domestic and international political agenda.

A spokesman for the North’s military warned the US of “disastrous consequences” for moving a group of ships, including an aircraft carrier, into a South Korean port.

“In this connection, the units of all services and army corps level of the KPA received an emergency order from its supreme command to re-examine the operation plans already ratified by it and keep themselves fully ready to promptly launch operations anytime,” the spokesman said, referring to the Korean People’s Army.

“The US will be wholly accountable for the unexpected horrible disaster to be met by its imperialist aggression forces’ nuclear strike means,” the spokesman said in a statement carried by the official KCNA news agency.

South Korea’s Defence Minister Kim Kwan-jin said later yesterday there was no indication of unusual activity by the North’s military. Washington brushed off the North’s warning.

“We’ve seen this type of rhetoric from North Korea before,” State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.
“Such comments from North Korea will do nothing to end (its) isolation or reduce the costs (it) pays for defying the international community.”

In March, the North declared it was no longer bound by the armistice that ended fighting in the 1950-53 Korean War signed with the US and China, and threatened to use nuclear weapons to attack US and South Korean territories.

South Korea’s defence ministry said the US ships were taking part in a joint routine maritime search and rescue exercise with the South’s navy and said any criticism by North Korea was “wrong”.

The North has defied international warnings not to build nuclear and long-range missiles and is believed to have enough fissile material to build up to 10 nuclear bombs.

Most intelligence analysis says it has yet to master the technology to deploy such weapons. The US, which has 28 500 troops stationed in the South, regularly engages in drills with its ally, and has said the aircraft carrier USS George Washington was leading a group of ships to visit South Korea in a routine port call.  Meanwhile, South Korea’s spy agency confirmed yesterday that the North has restarted an aging plutonium reactor that could help boost its nuclear weapons programme.

The National Intelligence Service said in a report to parliament that the five megawatt reactor at the North’s Yongbyon nuclear complex had resumed operations, according to a joint briefing by ruling and opposition party lawmakers.

The report was presented at a closed intelligence committee session, lawmakers told media.  The spy agency declined to comment on the report. It followed speculation by the US-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore that North Korea had restarted the reactor.

A commercial satellite image taken on September 19 showed the plutonium reactor releasing hot waste water into a river through a new drainpipe, the think tank said last week. An image from late July had not shown any sign of hot water discharge, however, indicating a recent relaunch.

In reports released last month, the institute and another Washington think tank, the Institute for Science and International Security, observed steam coming from the reactor.

The drainpipe is critical to maintaining a safe temperature at the reactor. North Korea knocked down a cooling tower in 2008 to show its commitment to a US-backed aid-for-disarmament deal.

Pyongyang carried out its third nuclear test in February, sparking international condemnation and raising tensions on the Korean peninsula for months.

Two months later, it boasted that it would restart all facilities at Yongbyon to bolster its atomic arsenal. Russia has warned that the resumption of Yongbyon could lead to catastrophe. The reactor, a source of great national pride and international anxiety over its role at the heart of North Korea’s nuclear ambitions, was built in 1986 and is outdated.

“Our main concern is linked to a very likely man-made disaster as a consequence. The reactor is in a nightmarish state, it is a design dating back to the 1950s,” a Russian diplomatic source told Interfax news agency last month. — Reuters/AFP.