South Korea’s Defense Minister Shin Won-sik on Friday called for “sternly” punishing any North Korean provocation south of the sea and land borders, his office said, amid tensions from Pyongyang’s continued weapons tests and increasingly harsh rhetoric.

Shin made the call during his visit to an Army command tasked with overseeing front-line operations, two days after the North fired multiple cruise missiles off its eastern coast in its fifth such launch this year.

The North’s leader Kim Jong-un oversaw the new “surface-to-sea” missile test and called for using force against South Korean vessels violating its waters, while claiming that the Northern Limit Line, the de facto inter-Korean sea border, is a “ghost” line without any legal ground.

Shin said the North is intentionally creating an atmosphere of war to strengthen internal solidarity and sow division within South Korea as he inspected the Ground Operations Command in Yongin, just south of Seoul, according to his office.

“If the enemy carries out a
provocation south of the Military Demarcation Line and the Northern Limit Line, sternly punish them immediately, strongly and until the end, and completely destroy the force undertaking provocations and its support forces,” he was quoted as saying.

Experts have raised concern that the North could carry out localized provocations around the sea and land borders ahead of South Korea’s parliamentary elections in April or the U.S. presidential election in November.

Source: Yonhap News Agency