SEOUL, Oct 28: North Korea accused South Korea on Tuesday of planning a pre-emptive strike and threatened to reduce it to “debris” in retaliation.

The North’s military, angry at a leaflet campaign by Seoul groups urging the overthrow of its leader, said it would use a “more powerful and advanced” strike of its own if South Korea launches a pre-emptive strike.

“The puppet authorities (Seoul) had better bear in mind that the advanced pre-emptive strike of our own style will reduce everything... to debris, not just setting them on fire,” it said in a statement carried by the state news agency, KCNA.

“It will turn out to be a just war... to build an independent reunified state on it.” The North’s military described its pre-emptive capability as “beyond imagination, relying on striking means more powerful than a nuclear weapon”. The 1.1 million-strong military has for years deployed hundreds of conventional missiles targeting the South.

Relations between the two nations have been frosty for months.

But the latest warning, in unusually strong language, was in response to the actions of South Korean activists and defectors, who have launched balloons carrying tens of thousands of leaflets across the heavily fortified border.

On Monday, activists launched more than 40,000 leaflets from a boat near the eastern sea border.

These urged North Koreans to rise up against leader Kim Jong-Il, whom they described as a “murderous” dictator, and repeated claims that he suffers from paralysis following a stroke in mid-August.

Kim’s health is an especially sensitive subject in the hardline communist state, which gives its citizens only official information.

Pyongyang has complained before about South Korean reports that Kim suffered a stroke for which he needed brain surgery.

Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso said Tuesday in Tokyo that Kim is likely in hospital but is still capable of making decisions.

The military warned it would take “resolute practical action” if the South pursues a “confrontational racket” by spreading leaflets and conducting a smear campaign “with sheer fabrications”.

It did not elaborate on the action. At military talks on Monday the North repeated threats to evict South Koreans from the Kaesong joint industrial complex unless Seoul stops the cross-border leaflets.

Tuesday’s statement rejected Seoul’s arguments that it cannot stop such actions in a democracy. It said the leaflet launches were masterminded by the South’s spy agency.

The statement also warned of a “total severance” of relations unless the conservative South Korean government respects summit accords reached with previous liberal Seoul governments in 2000 and 2007.

“The warning is not empty words because the North’s military will never tolerate slandering its leader,” Koh Yu-Hwan, a Dongkuk University professor, said.

“North Korea may take strong military action or a limited military clash is always possible,” he said.

The North’s government newspaper Minju Josun said last week that the launch of leaflets could spark accidental border clashes which could develop into a full-scale military confrontation.

North Korea has already cut almost all official contacts with Seoul since President

Lee Myung-Bak took office in February and adopted a tougher stance on cross-border ties.

After their first summit in 2000, the two nations agreed to halt government-level propaganda, a feature of the Cold War era.

But Seoul-based private groups have continued their leaflet drops, despite pleas from the South Korean government and from factory operators in Kaesong to stop the practice.

The two Koreas have remained technically at war since the 1950-53 conflict on the peninsula ended only in an armistice.—AFP