North Korea says propaganda war could turn into “sea of fire”

North Korea threatened Saturday to attack its southern neighbor after activists launched helium balloons carrying anti-Pyongang leaflets.

Participants raise their fists as they chant slogans during a…

They also coincide with the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the peninsula after the Japanese surrender in 1945, the celebrations had raised hopes of a rapprochement between the two Koreas, but both countries have instead fallen into a spiral of mutual recriminations.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, however, will not visit the shrine as it could anger the country’s neighbors, such as South Korea and Japan, which view the site as a symbol of Japan’s militaristic past, the agency said.

The nuclear-armed North regularly ups its bellicose rhetoric before and during the joint military exercises South Korea holds with its US ally every year, but rarely follows through on its threats.

South Korean President Park Geun Hye said she will “sternly” deal with any North Korean provocation, hours after the Kim Jong Un regime threatened strikes over propaganda broadcasts in the demilitarized zone. The North Koreans apparently believe that empire is in much better shape than, say, Iran does.

Complicating relations at this tense moment is North Korea’s sudden move to turn back its clocks by 30 minutes for what it described as ridding itself of the legacy of Japan’s 1910-45 colonial rule of Korea.

“Pyongyang appears to be modernising a key facility associated with the production of uranium yellowcake”, Dr Lewis wrote in a new report for 38 North, a website run by the US-Korea Institute at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced global Studies.

They attended marches, rallies and meetings calling for the Koreas’ reunification, with speeches praising the North Korean leadership.

The area where the soldiers were patrolling is on higher ground than the places where North Korean mines have been previously planted, meaning the recent mines must have been purposely laid there by the North, chief South Korean investigator Ahn Young-ho told reporters.

The North has been quick to criticize South Korea for not similarly abandoning for good the Japanese time zone. However, he added that the fuel could also be used in light-water reactors, which generate electricity, which North Korea may be planning.

A total of 124 South Korean small and medium enterprises operate production facilities at the park, which opened in 2004 and remains the most salient outcome of inter-Korean rapprochement.