North Korea threatens ‘indiscriminate’ military strikes on South, nuclear strikes on U.S.

North Korea on Saturday threatened to launch “indiscriminate” military strikes on South Korea unless it halts cross-border propaganda broadcasts, and issues new nuclear warnings to the U.S. 

The new threats come amid escalating military tensions on the Korean peninsula following a land-mine attack South Korea has blamed on the North and ahead of a major South Korea-US join military exercise condemned by Pyongyang, The Agence France Presse reported.

After two land-mine blasts maimed two South Korean soldiers on border patrol, Seoul this week resume loud radio propaganda broadcasts across the border, using loudspeakers that had lain silent for more than a decade. 

Pyongyang vehemently denied the accusations that it was responsible for the mine incident as “absurd,” and its frontline army border command on Saturday demanded the broadcasts be halted immediately or risk “an all-out military action of justice to blow up all means for ’anti-North psychological warfare’ in all areas along the front,” AFP reported.  

The action will involve “indiscriminate strikes which envisage even possible challenge and escalating counter action,” the command said in a statement carried by the North’s official KCNA news agency.

In addition, the North’s National Defense Commission threatened the U.S. with the “strongest military counter-action” should the joint exercise with South Korea go ahead, AFP reported. 

The North Korean army and people “are no longer what they used to be in the past when they had to counter the US nukes with rifles,” the commission said in a statement.

It is now an “invincible power equipped with both latest offensive and defensive means … including nuclear deterrence,” it said, AFP reported.

The threats also come as both Koreas celebrate the 70th anniversary of the Korean peninsula’s 1945 liberation from Japanese colonial rule. North Korea changed it’s time zone to mark the occasion, and now operated on “Korea Time.”