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A week of strong threats

The North's comments Friday doubled down on statements it had made earlier this week, promising to abolish the armistice agreement that stopped the Korean War in 1953, and threatening strikes on the United States and South Korea.

Claiming its enemies are "hell bent on confrontation and war fever," Pyongyang said it was now revoking "all agreements on nonaggression reached between the north and the south," a declaration it has made in previous years

It also said it was nullifying the joint declaration on the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. The North, which conducted its third underground nuclear test last month, had said recently that denuclearization of the region was "impossible" because of what it described as the United States' hostile policy toward it.

And it stated that it was immediately cutting off the "north-south hotline," three days after it had already said it planned to terminate its military telephone line with the United States.

The phone line is meant to serve as a tool to defuse potential flash points along the heavily militarized border between the two Koreas.

But Andre Kok, deputy public affairs officer for U.S. Forces in Korea, said that reports of the North's Korean People's Army (KPA) cutting off communication often arise when military training exercises are taking place, as they are at the moment.

"When we place a call on the direct phone line and the KPA does not answer, we have no way of knowing if the KPA has actually disconnected the phone lines or are just not answering the phone," he said.

North Korea on Friday responded to tougher sanctions from the U.N. Security Council with another barrage of vitriol, repeating a vow to ditch all nonaggression pacts with the South.

A day after the isolated regime in Pyongyang had threatened a possible "preemptive nuclear attack" -- something analysts say they think it is unlikely and currently unable to do -- its official news agency reeled off a number of agreements with South Korea that it said would no longer apply.

It's the latest installment in a week of furious rhetoric from the North, fueled by its anger over the U.N. vote on the new sanctions, a response to the Pyongyang's recent nuclear test, and joint military drills by the United States and South Korea, which take place in the region each year.

North Korea watchers and U.S. officials say that the recent frenzy of ominous language from North Korea under its young leader Kim Jong Un makes the situation on the Korean Peninsula more worrying and unpredictable.