North Korea says it will seek extradition of plot culprits

PYONGYANG, North Korea -- Pyongyang will seek the extradition of anyone involved in what it says was a CIA-backed plot to kill leader Kim Jung Un last month with a biochemical poison, a top North Korean foreign ministry official said Thursday.

Han Song Ryol, the vice foreign minister, called a meeting of foreign diplomats in Pyongyang to outline the North's allegation the CIA and South Korea's intelligence agency bribed and coerced a North Korean man into joining in the assassination plot, which the North's Ministry of State Security has suggested was thwarted last month.

North Korea's U.N. Mission late Thursday issued a statement calling the purported plot to kill Kim a "declaration of war."

It said the aim was to hurt "the mental mainstay that all the Korean people absolutely trust" and "eclipse the eternal sun" of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the country's official name. The North's state media have been running stories about the plot since last week. The security ministry has vowed to "ferret out" anyone involved in the alleged plot, which it called "state-sponsored terrorism."

The U.N. Mission said the Ministry of State Security declared a "Korean-style anti-terrorist offensive will be commenced to mop up the intelligence and plot-breeding organizations of the U.S. and South Korea."