'Pyongyang will not fire single bullet toward Seoul'

Seoul, April 5 (IANS) Kim Yo-jong, sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, said Pyongyang won't "fire even a single bullet or shell toward South Korea because we do not regard it as match for our armed forces", state media reported on Tuesday.

In a press statement, her second in two days, Kim Yo-jong again took issue with the South Korean defense chief's talk in public last week of his troops' "preemptive strike" capabilities, boasting repeatedly about Pyongyang's nuclear combat force, reports Yonhap News Agency.

"If anyone does not provoke us, we will never strike it before anything else," she said in the statement carried by Pyongyang's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

"We will not fire even a single bullet or shell toward South Korea. It is because we do not regard it as match for our armed forces.

"In other words, it means that unless the South Korean army takes any military action against our state, it will not be regarded as a target of our attack," Kim Yo-jong added.

She however, warned that although the North opposes a war that may put the Peninsula into a "disaster" like that in the 1950s, things could change, depending on the South's moves.