N Korea says it will destroy South island

Seoul (AFP): North Korea leader Kim Jong-un threatened to 'wipe out' a South Korean island as Pyongyang came under new economic and diplomatic fire today from US sanctions and UN charges of gross rights abuses. Military tensions on the Korean peninsula have risen to their highest level for years, with the communist state under the youthful Kim threatening a nuclear war in response to UN sanctions imposed after its third atomic test last month. It has also announced its unilateral shredding of the 60-year-old Korean War armistice and non-aggression pacts with Seoul in protest at a joint South Korean-US military exercise that began on Monday. While most of these statements have been dismissed as a rhetorical bluster, the latest threat to the border island of Baengnyeong, which has around 5,000 civilian residents, appears credible and carries the weight of precedent. In 2010, the South Korean naval vessel Cheonan was sunk in the area of Baengnyeong with the loss of 46 lives, and later that year North Korea shelled the nearby island of Yeonpyeong, killing four people. On a visit to frontline artillery units on Monday, Kim Jong-un briefed officers on plans for turning Baengnyeong into 'a sea of flames'. "Once an order is issued, you should break the waists of the crazy enemies, totally cut their windpipes and thus clearly show them what a real war is like," Kim was quoted as saying by the Korean Central News Agency.