AFP, Seoul :Escalating military tensions on the divided Korean peninsula took an increasingly personal turn Friday, with the leaders of North and South each threatening the other’s destruction.For North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un that meant overseeing a long-range artillery drill, simulating a strike on the offices and official residence of his South Korean counterpart, Park Geun-Hye.Park, meanwhile, countered by accusing Kim of leading his country down a “path of self destruction” and suggesting it was time for regime change in Pyongyang.Tensions between the two Koreas have been rising since North Korea carried out its fourth nuclear test in January, and a satellite rocket launch a month later that was widely seen as a disguised ballistic missile test.Pyongyang has upped the rhetorical ante in recent weeks, with near daily threats of nuclear and conventional strikes against the South and the US mainland in response to large-scale South-US war games.On Wednesday, it warned of a “miserable end” facing Park Geun-Hye, with its artillery units standing ready to turn the presidential Blue House in Seoul into a “sea of flames and ashes”.According to a report by the North’s official KCNA news agency on Friday, Kim took that warning a step further by ordering and personally monitoring a live-fire exercise involving the same target. “Artillery shells flew like lightning and intensely and fiercely struck targets simulating Cheong Wa Dae and rebel governing bodies in Seoul,” the North’s official KCNA news agency said.According to KCNA, it was the largest drill of its type ever conducted, involving “hundreds of different types” of long-range artillery.”If the enemies challenge us… our artillery forces’ merciless retaliating blow will turn Seoul into rubble and ashes,” Kim was quoted as saying.
