(dpa) - North Korea has threatened to break off official contacts with South Korea unless it apologizes for comments by its army chief about a possible "preventative strike" against the communist state.
The new head of South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff, Kim Tae Young, reportedly told a a parliamentary committee in Seoul Wednesday that South Korea could strike at North Korean nuclear facilities if the communist state sought to attack it with nuclear weapons.
However, South Korean government officials denied that Kim spoke of a preventative strike.
The North Korean military said Kim's comments were a provocation.
"If our style of advanced preemptive strike starts, everything will become ashes, not just a sea of fire," North Korea said, according to the official KCNA news agency.
Tensions have escalated recently between the two parts of the divided Korean peninsula.
North Korea on Friday test-fired a series of short-range missiles over the Yellow Sea.
The tests came a day after North Korea expelled 11 South Korean officials from the inter-Korean industrial zone at Kaesong and two days after South Korean and US officials indicated that patience was running out over stalled nuclear talks with Pyongyang.