Japanese government spokesman Yoshihide Suga said that North Korea was the "neighborhood outlaw" after Pyongyang's fifth nuclear weapons test on Friday. Barack Obama said that "The United States does not, and never will, accept North Korea as a nuclear state." Even China voiced its "firm opposition to the test." And South Korea's president, Park Gyeung-hye, accused North Korea's Dear Leader Kim Jong Un of "maniacal recklessness."
So far, so restrained — in stark contrast to the berserk threats and fulminations that are the usual fare in North Korea. (Promising to obliterate Seoul, the South Korean capital, in a "sea of fire" is a familiar favorite.)
But then a military spokesman of the South Korean government promised that Pyongyang "will be completely destroyed by ballistic missiles and high-explosive shells" if North Korea even thinks of launching a nuclear attack on the South. The city will be "reduced to ashes and removed from the map," said the official — and districts of Pyongyang thought to be hiding the North's leadership will be particularly targeted in the attack.