North Korea threatens war over blockade plan

NORTH KOREA vowed yesterday to meet any US-led blockade on the communist state with “limitless” retaliation, saying the flames of war would immediately spread to Japan.

Isolated North Korea is facing deepening international ostracism and mounting pressure from the United States and its allies over its pursuit of nuclear weapons.

The nuclear crisis has also thrown a spotlight on North Korea’s trade in arms and illegal drugs, prompting plans by the US and its allies to curb such traffic.

US and South Korean officials say any policing action would merely enforce existing laws and not represent sanctions or a blockade.

A quarantine would not work without the help of China and Russia, which share borders with North Korea, experts say.

But North Korea’s official Rodong Sinmun daily said the moves were part of a premeditated war plan.

“The DPRK will take an immediate physical retaliatory step against the US once it judges that its sovereignty is infringed upon by Washington’s blockade operation,” said the newspaper.

DPRK is the acronym for the Democratic People’s Republic of

Korea, North Korea’s official title. “Nobody can vouch that this blockade operation will not lead to such a serious development as an all-out war,” it said.

The US and its allies say Pyongyang is exporting narcotics, counterfeit money and missile technology to help fund its nuclear weapons programme and prop up its ailing economy.

In a meeting with South Korea and Japan in Hawaii at the weekend, 11 countries, including the US, agreed to join forces to find a way to block North Korean ships suspected of carrying drugs, counterfeit money or materials for weapons of mass destruction at a meeting in Madrid last week.

North Korea rejected the trafficking allegations as groundless and part of US attempts to undermine Pyongyang in its stand-off with Washington over its nuclear weapons ambitions.

Meeting in Cambodia yesterday, the foreign ministers of South Korea, Japan and China agreed to try to bring Pyongyang and Washington together for a new round of talks after a meeting in Beijing in April at which North Korea said it nuclear weapons.