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Updated Thursday, June 18, 2009 0:57 am TWN, SEOUL, AP

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N. Korea warns of 'thousand-fold' military action

Attention has been focused on North Korea since it conducted a nuclear test, its second, on May 25 in defiance of the United Nations. The U.N. Security Council responded by toughening an arms embargo, authorizing ship searches for nuclear and ballistic missile cargo and depriving the regime of the financing used to build its nuclear program.

South Korea's Dong-a Ilbo newspaper reported Wednesday that the North has begun withdrawing money from its bank accounts in the Chinese territory of Macau and elsewhere, for fear they would be frozen under the U.N. sanctions.

But Lim Eul-chul, a research professor at South Korea's Kyungnam University and an expert on North Korea, cast doubt on the report. He said the North likely had decreased its exposure to banks in Macau sharply after its funds were previously frozen there under U.S. sanctions.

"They know how to keep and secure their money," Lim said, adding that North Korea can effectively hide funds in accounts in mainland China opened in the name of third parties such as local Chinese companies and ethnic Korean Chinese citizens.

Separately, Japan's Sankei newspaper said Wednesday that the North has been showing signs of preparing two sites the Dongchang-ni site on the northwestern coast and the Musudan-ni site on the northeastern coast from where a long-range missile could be launched.

It was earlier thought that any launch would come only from the northwest.

South Korea's Chosun Ilbo newspaper also carried a similar report Wednesday, quoting an unidentified government official as saying that a special train that carried a long-range missile to the northwestern site has recently moved to the northeastern site.

But South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported that North Korea has been running an empty cargo train from a weapons factory to the two sites.

Yonhap quoted an unnamed government official as saying the movement is aimed at "confusing" foreign intelligence agencies.

Still, Paik Hak-soon, an analyst at the private Sejong Institute think tank outside Seoul, said the possibility of the North conducting a long-range missile test is high unless tension with the U.S. "is dramatically reduced."

In Moscow, the Interfax news agency quoted Deputy Defense Minister Viktor Popovkin as saying that if a North Korean missile comes toward Russia "we will see it and shoot it down."

South Korea's Unification Ministry, Finance Ministry, Defense Ministry and the National Intelligence Service said they could not confirm the reports on money withdrawals or on the missiles, which ostensibly can carry a nuclear warhead. It remains unclear whether they have developed a nuclear device small enough to be carried on a missile.

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