The North's response came in mid-afternoon, in a 1, 000 word statement from its highest decision-making body, the National Defense Commission.
Last month, North Korea's National Defense Commission said the United States was its prime target for a nuclear test and long-range rocket launches.
On Jan. 24, the National Defense Commission, North Korea's most powerful body, said "a nuclear test of higher level" would be carried out.
Ri Yong Ho was appointed vice marshal and vice chairman of the National Defense Commission, the body considered the most powerful in North Korea.
In April, he named his son, Kim Jong-un, and brother-in-law, Jang Song Thaek, to the country's powerful National Defense Commission, suggesting that his son may be his heir.
The statement from the Policy Department of the National Defense Commission, the country's top governing body, came four days after Pyongyang rejected Seoul's latest dialogue offer as insincere.
In 1980, he gained a position on the National Defense Commission, the other center of power in the country, and from then on was viewed as his father's successor.
"Pyongyang will be the first to take tough action if the South insists on worsening the situation at the border town, " North Korea's National Defense Commission said in a statement.
Ri took the No. 2 spot behind Kim Jong Il on the National Defense Commission, North Korea's most powerful organization, following the death of a general who had also served with Kim Il Sung.
On Sunday, North Korean state media reported commentary from a spokesman for Pyongyang's top decision-making entity, the National Defense Commission, that represented some of the most aggressive criticism of Ms. Park from the North since she took office in February.
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As Chairman of the National Defense Commission and the Korean People's Army, Kim has overseen a system-wide reorganization of the military leadership over the past five years, an effort that has left him in unmodifiable control of the armed forces.
The national flag fluttered across the city as North Korea marked the 20th anniversary of late leader Kim Jong Il's appointment as chairman of the National Defense Commission, and workers began preparing the city for the April 15 birthday of late President Kim Il Sung.
The statement's harsh language and attribution to the North's National Defense Commission was also a sign that the younger Kim may engage in some kind of military provocation against the South to rally support for himself by portraying the North's citizens as under threat from Seoul.
"To company with them is a disgrace for the clear and honest-minded Korean nation as they are ignorant in politics, vulgar in morals and lack elementary human nature, " the statement, attributed to North Korea's National Defense Commission, considered its most powerful organ, said of Mr. Lee's government.
On Wednesday, an unidentified spokesman for the North Korean National Defense Commission's armed forces ministry repeated those threats while decrying South Korea's own recent rhetoric, including a warning from Seoul that North Korea's government will "evaporate from the face of the Earth" if it ever uses a nuclear weapon.
North Korea took another step in building up the image of the current leader Kim Jong Eun later on Friday when its Supreme People's Assembly gave him the final title that his father and grandfather had before him chairman of the National Defense Commission, considered the most powerful organ in the state.
In 2007, President Nicolas Sarkozy appointed Debouzy to France's Defense and National Security White Paper Commission.
Commission for Science Technology and Industry for National Defense (COSTIND).
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Both the President-elect and his Secretary of Defense-designee underscored at their joint press conference on December 28th the impression the findings of the first Rumsfeld commission had made on them and on the debate about national missile defense.
Shelton, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, concerning the recently published Rumsfeld Commission Report and its relation to U.S. policy on national missile defense.
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