Around 12:30 a.m. ET Monday night (1:30 p.m. in Korea), North Korea (the DPRK) cut into television programming to broadcast a "special announcement" from its military.
Awaiting word of a "special announcement" from #DPRK momentarily per KCNA.— Steve Herman (@W7VOA) April 23, 2012
#DPRK TV broke into programming to make the special announcement. This is not one of those "routine" nasty threats from Pyongyang it seems.— Steve Herman (@W7VOA) April 23, 2012
The North Korean military's strident threat, via BNO News, singles out South Korean president Lee Myung Bak by name:
In view of the situation getting graver as the days go by, the KPA Supreme Command special operation action group issues the following notice upon authorization:
The special actions of our revolutionary armed forces will start soon to meet the reckless challenge of the group of traitors.
Those actions are an eruption of the public anger and resentment and a sacred war of all service personnel and people to protect the dignity of our supreme leadership.
Their targets are the Lee Myung Bak group of traitors, the arch criminals, and the group of rat-like elements including conservative media destroying the mainstay of the fair public opinion.
Once the above-said special actions kick off, they will reduce all the rat-like groups and the bases for provocations to ashes in three or four minutes, in much shorter time, by unprecedented peculiar means and methods of our own style.
Our revolutionary armed forces do not make an empty talk.
According BNO's president, Michael van Poppel, the awkward English translation is North Korea's own.
The US embassy in Seoul (tweeting about an hour after the threat), took the whole thing in stride:
We were glad to see US stars @ladygaga & @jessicaalba discover the charms of Seoul this past weekend. Did any of you spot them on the town?— U.S. Embassy Seoul(@usembassyseoul) April 23, 2012