The tension between North and South Korea continues to grow as a North Korean diplomat threatened its southern neighbor with "final destruction."
The remarks were made during the United Nations Conference on Disarmament held in Geneva on Tuesday and come only a week since North Korea's latest nuclear bomb test, Reuters reports.
"As the saying goes, a new-born puppy knows no fear of a tiger. South Korea's erratic behavior would only herald its final destruction," North Korean diplomat Jon Yong Ryong said during the meeting.
Provoked by last week's nuclear test, South Korean officials say they will attack North Korea if they believe a strike is imminent. But North Korea says the test was necessary to improve the country's defense against potential attacks from the United States.
"Our current nuclear test is the primary countermeasure taken by the DPRK in which it exercised its maximum self-restraint," said Ryong, adding "If the U.S. takes a hostile approach toward the DPRK to the last, rendering the situation complicated, it (North Korea) will be left with no option but to take the second and third stronger steps in succession."
Ambassadors from France, Germany, and Britain quickly criticised the remarks saying it was inappropriate and counter productive.
"In the 30 years of my career I've never heard anything like it and it seems to me that we are not speaking about something that is even admissible, we are speaking about a threat of the use of force that is prohibited by Article 2.4 of the United Nations charter," Spanish Ambassador Javier Gil Catalina told Reuters.
Reports say North Korea is preparing to hold one or two more nuclear bomb tests this year.
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