North Korea angrily reacts to 'enemy' remarks

A North Korean soldier looks inside a Military Armistice Committee or AMC meeting room at the border village of Panmunjom in the demilitarized zone that separates the two Koreas since the Korean War, north of Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, July 23, 2008. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice held talks with Asian officials Wednesday before meeting North Korea's top diplomat in what will be Washington's highest-level contact with the Stalinist state in four years. (AP Photo/ Yonhap, Kim Hyun-tai)

SEOUL, South Korea—North Korea lashed out Thursday at the South Korean defense chief for labeling the communist state an enemy.

Earlier this week, South Korean Defense Minister Lee Sang-hee told parliament the country's military views North Korea as "a present enemy" and threat.

South Korea had called North Korea its "main enemy" in official documents after the North threatened to turn Seoul into "a sea of fire" in 1994. But South Korea stopped using the reference in 2005 amid reduced tension between the divided countries, and the Defense Ministry stressed Lee stopped short of directly using the "main enemy" term.

Still, the North's Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland said in a statement Thursday that it will not tolerate the latest remarks and will respond to the South in a stronger manner, giving no specifics.

The comment was an "unpardonable provocation" against the North, said the statement, carried by its Korean Central News Agency.

Reconciliation efforts between the two Koreas have been frozen since a conservative, pro-U.S. government was inaugurated in Seoul in February. Relations plunged after the shooting death of a South Korean tourist at a North Korean resort earlier this month.

The two Koreas are still technically in state of war as an armistice ending their 1950-53 Korean War has never been replaced with a peace treaty.