North Korea Warns: American Attack on Its Nuclear Facilities May Lead to "Total War"

It is reported in Tokyo: North Korea threatens that a preventive attack by the United States at its nuclear facilities will lead to a "total war", the North Korean newspaper Rodong Shinmun writes on Thursday. "It's foolish of the United States to expect us to sit and wait for it giving an order for a preventive attack," stresses the organ of the Korean Workers' Party. North Korea will "reciprocate to a preventive attack by a mighty counterattack, a total war for a total war," writes the newspaper.

The Rodong Shinmun commentary, set forth by the Japanese news Agency Kyodo Tsushin, does not believe Washington's assurances of having no intentions to attack the DPRK. It can be a smokescreen for an attack on the North Korean state, whose legitimacy the United States stubbornly would not recognize.

The Pyongyang-based Central Telegraph Agency of Korea transmitted a statement on Thursday saying that, in case the United States provokes hostilities, they may grow into a nuclear war on the Korea peninsula.

"Nobody else but Koreans in the North and the South will suffer," stresses the Central Telegraph Agency of Korea.

In the opinion of observers, these words are addressed to, above all, South Korea for Seoul to assume a tougher stance against the American plans regarding the DPRK.

About 37,000 American servicemen are stationed in South Korea with weapons targeted against the DPRK. Seoul has many times voiced apprehensions that, in case of an American attack against Pyongyang, targets of counterattacks will unavoidably be found in South Korea.