PYONGYANG, North Korea, Nov. 24 (UPI) -- North Korea's military Thursday unleashed a verbal attack on South Korea in response to the South's staging of military exercises off the North's coast.
South Korea's Yonhap News Agency reported the North Korean military command's aggressive rhetoric was fueled by the South's military exercises near Yeonpyeong Island in the Yellow Sea Wednesday to mark the first anniversary of the North's shelling of the South Korean border island that left four people dead.
A statement by the North's military, carried in the North's state-run news agency, declared any shots fired toward its territory would result in a "deluge of fire" on the island, South Korea's presidential offices and "sweeping away the stronghold of the group of traitors."
The North Korean commanders, who have made similar threats for years, said they viewed Seoul's exercises as a rehearsal for a war against the North. The South's military had no response to Pyongyang's vitriol, Yonhap said.
A North Korean Foreign Ministry Thursday spokesman rejected a U.N. resolution condemning the North for alleged human-rights abuses.
"The adoption of the 'resolution' is a trite political trick employed by the U.S. and its followers hostile toward" the North every year, the spokesman said in comments reported by the North Korean news agency.
The U.N. General Assembly is expected to vote on the resolution next month.
