Pyongyang: We'll turn South Korean govt to ashes in 4 minutes

North Korea said it will reduce South Korea’s government to ashes in a matter of minutes, should a military escalation of the decades-old conflict occur.

The statement by the North’s military, carried by the state media, did not elaborate as to how exactly such an attack would be carried out. It mentions “special actions” that would “reduce all the rat-like groups and the bases for provocations to ashes in three or four minutes, (or) in a much shorter time, by unprecedented peculiar means and methods of our own style.”Monday’s threat is the latest in Pyongyang’s tough-talking rhetoric against the government of South Korean President Lee Myung-bak. The relations between the two countries have been at a decades-long low since the conservative hardliner took office in 2008.Tension in the region was heightened by the April 13 attempted launch of a North Korean satellite. The failed attempt to boost a spacecraft into space was condemned by the UN Security Council, because it violated a resolution banning missile launches by the North.There is fear that after the failure Pyongyang may carry out a third nuclear devise test. North Korea withdrew from a nuclear moratorium it agreed to as part of a food aid deal with the US, after Americans canceled the program following the missile launch.