N. Korea threatens South with "sea of fire"

North Korea threatened Thursday to turn Seoul's presidential palace office into a "sea of fire," stepping up its rhetoric one day after South Korea conducted large-scale military drills near a front-line island attacked by North Korea last year.

On Wednesday, South Korea mobilized aircraft, rocket launchers, artillery guns and naval boats for the first anniversary of the artillery attack on a military garrison and fishing community on Yeonpyeong Island in the Yellow Sea. Two marines and two construction workers were killed in the attack, the first on a civilian area since the 1950-53 Korean War.

A similar "sea of fire" threatens to engulf Seoul's presidential Blue House if South Korean forces fire a single shot into North Korean territory, the North's People's Army warned in a statement from Pyongyang.

"They should not forget the lesson taught" by the Yeonpyeong shelling last year, said the statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency. more