North Korea's state-run media reported Monday that the country has almost completed preparations for "the largest-ever distribution" of propaganda material against the South, saying it has printed 12 million leaflets.
"The time for retaliatory punishment is drawing near," the official Korean Central News Agency said in English, as tensions have escalated since the release in South Korea of balloons carrying leaflets lambasting North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's rule.
"As of June 22, various equipment and means of distributing leaflets, including over 3,000 balloons of various types capable of scattering leaflets deep inside south Korea, have been prepared," the news agency said.
"Only when it experiences how painful and how irritating it is to dispose of leaflets and waste, it will shake off its bad habit," it added.
A South Korean military official, meanwhile, said at a press conference on Monday that the nation has been monitoring moves by the North's troops 24 hours a day.
Pyongyang has not announced when it will release balloons carrying such leaflets, but some foreign affairs experts expect that North Korea will do so by Thursday, which marks the 70th anniversary of the start of the 1950-1953 Korean War.
North Korea said Wednesday that its troops are redeploying to two areas that had been demilitarized under agreements with the South, in retaliation for the anti-Pyongyang leaflets sent across the border by balloon by defector groups and other activists.
Last week North Korea also blew up an inter-Korean liaison office in the country's border city of Kaesong -- one of the symbols of reconciliation on the Korean Peninsula.
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