LOC19:19
16:19 GMT
TOKYO, Feb 16 (KUNA) -- 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 amid tensions from Pyongyang's continued weapons tests and increasingly harsh rhetoric, Yonhap News Agency reported.
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 Lineأں the de facto inter-Korean sea border, is a "ghost" line without any legal ground.
"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," Shin stressed, according to his office.
He also said the North is intentionally creating an atmosphere of war to strengthen internal solidarity and sow division within South Korea, the report added. (end)
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