DPRK slams ROK president's remarks

PYONGYANG - The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) on Friday slammed President of Republic of Korea (ROK) Park Geun-hye's speech at the 69th United Nations General Assembly, saying that she was intended to escalate confrontation with the DPRK.

Park's remarks were "a blatant challenge to the dignity and social system of the DPRK and an extremely dangerous provocation driving the bedeviled north-south relations into a total catastrophe," the official news agency KCNA reported, citing a statement released Friday by the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea.

The statement said that the DPRK would have no alternative but to fight for national reunification in its own way if Seoul attempted to achieve "unification through absorption."

Park on Wednesday made her first keynote speech at the UN General Assembly and called on the international community to help tear down the world's last remaining wall of division separating the north from south of Korea.

In the speech, Park proposed building corridors within the four-kilometer-wide and 250-kilometer-long Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) between the two sides as the first step in the process of allowing the two peoples to "live in natural harmony within a single ecosystem."

Park urged the DPRK to give up its nuclear program, which she called "the single-greatest threat to peace on the Korean Peninsula and in Northeast Asia", saying that should Pyongyang choose to do so, South Korea, together with the international community, will provide strong support for developing the DPRK economy.

The president also called for global attention to addressing the DPRK human rights issue, but Pyongyang insisted such an issue does not exist at all in the country.