North Korea Vows ‘High-Profile’ Retaliation Over Sanctions

North Korea ramped up its warlike bluster over U.N. sanctions Sunday, threatening strong retaliation, state media reported.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un met with top security and foreign affairs officials on the matter Saturday.

“At the consultative meeting, Kim Jong Un expressed the firm resolution to take substantial and high-profile important state measures in view of the prevailing situation,” said the North’s Korean Central News Agency. “He advanced specific tasks to the officials concerned.”

KCNA did not specify the measures that will be taken, but a barrage of threats was issued by the North after the U.N. Security Council unanimously tightened the sanctions slapped on the reclusive nation following recent nuclear tests.

The resolution was backed by its only ally, China, and was adopted in response to its long-range rocket launch in December.

Pyongyang, furious over the sanctions, vowed to conduct a third nuclear test and threatened to launch more missiles targeting the U.S.

"I am satisfied with the statement stressing that settling accounts with the U.S. needs to be done with force, not with words, as it regards jungle law as the rule of its survival. This fully reflects the KPA's will to annihilate the enemies. Words do never work on the U.S. imperialists. I am eager to shower a fire on them at once," said Kim Yong Jin, an officer of the Korean People's Army, KCNA reported.

Pyongyang had also threatened South Korea with war if it took part in the sanctions regime.

Describing the resolution as fabricated, the North had said the move represents “the height of the hostile policy toward the DPRK.”

Pyongyang has rejected all resolutions against it so far, claiming its nuclear program is for peaceful scientific purposes and claiming the sovereign right to conduct nuclear tests and missile launches.

Meanwhile, satellite images showed that North Korea is serious over the third nuclear test and the country is ready to conduct the test in its Punggye-ri site, where it had conducted nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009.

An Associated Press report citing the analysis on the satellite image, provided by 38 North, the website of U.S.-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, said: “Over the past month roads have been kept clear of snow and that North Koreans may have been sealing the tunnel into a mountainside where a nuclear device would be detonated.”

An earlier picture of the site had showed heaps of material that could be used for sealing the tunnel, while in the latest picture the piles were smaller, indicating that the sealing of the tunnel is in progress, the analysis stated.