North Korea responded with the threat of nuclear war on Sunday to comments made at an air force base forum in Seoul that the South should consider a pre-emptive strike as an option to incapacitate Pyongyang.
"The 'pre-emptive attack on the North' means provocation of a nuclear war," a spokesman for Pyongyang's Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.
North Korea declared itself a nuclear power following its October 9 underground test of its first atomic bomb. It sparked international sanctions and condemnation, especially from the US, Japan and neighbouring South Korea.
The North's spokesman repeated Sunday that Pyongyang's nuclear deterrent was actually targeting what he called the US "nuclear threat", not South Koreans.
But South Korean air force academy professors said at a seminar held in Seoul earlier this month it was time for Seoul to consider a "pre-emptive attack" on North Korea as an option to incapacitate Pyongyang.
The North's spokesman said Sunday in response: "This is an intolerable provocation against the DPRK (North Korea) and a treacherous crime seeking to act as a shock brigade in executing the US nuclear war against the DPRK.
"The South Korean warlike forces ... will never escape a shameless defeat in face of a merciless and just counter-attack from the North."
The two Koreas have been technically at war since the 1950-1953 conflict that ended in a fragile armistice, not a peace treaty.
Both sides had launched a series of peace initiatives since a summit in 2000 between their leaders, but such peaceful engagement suffered a setback following the North's missile tests in July and the October 9 nuclear test.
An Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation summit forum that ended in Hanoi, Vietnam on Sunday expressed "strong concern" over North Korea's nuclear test,
and supported UN sanctions to press the communist state to disarm.
North Korea announced on November 1 it would return to six-way talks on scrapping its nuclear program, ending a year-long boycott in protest at US restrictions on its overseas bank accounts.
The talks, which also involve the two Koreas, Japan, China, Russia and the United States, are expected to resume next month.