N.Korea Warns Foreigners to Leave S.Korea

North Korea on Tuesday warned foreign nationals to leave South Korea and find somewhere else to take shelter. A spokesman for the North's Asia-Pacific Peace Committee claimed "hostile activities and provocative war maneuvers" by the U.S. and South Korea have taken the situation on the Korean Peninsula to the brink of a thermonuclear war.

Threatening a "merciless sacred retaliatory war," the spokesman said the North "does not want to see foreigners in South Korea hurt in the case of war."

Last Friday and Sunday, the regime also advised foreign embassies in Pyongyang to consider evacuating their staff.

Cheong Wa Dae spokeswoman Kim Haeng dismissed the warning. "We regard the North's threat as an attempt at psychological warfare against foreigners residing here. But neither foreigners living here nor South Koreans seem perturbed because they have confidence in our military and government," she said.

Last week, the North started sending faxes to social and religious organizations in South Korea calling on them to stage an anti-U.S., anti-government struggle.

A government official said the North sent the faxes to about 20 organizations including People's Solidarity for Participatory Democracy.

Purportedly written by the National Reconciliation Council and several other North Korean organizations, the faxes attribute the latest tension on the Korean Peninsula to Seoul and Washington. "We firmly expect your organization to proactively rise up to denounce the U.S. and its followers for their reckless nuclear war maneuver against" the North.

The official said the North's United Front Department is taking "one step after another" to sow division in the south.

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