The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) on Saturday urged the Republic of Korea (ROK) to thoroughly cancel the conception of portraying the DPRK as "the principal enemy" internally and externally and drop its hostility toward the DPRK.

The DPRK statement was made after the ROK officially announced in the new "White Paper for National Defense" issued on Friday that it finally decided not to use the conception of "the principal enemy" when referring to the DPRK.

But the ROK Defense Ministry still describes the DPRK as "a substantial military threat" in the paper for overseas distribution and keeps using the existing "conception of the principal enemy" in the domestic documents to be used by the military, reports said in Pyongyang.

"This is little short of an open announcement of the South Korean military authorities' intention to stand against the north, as ever obsessed by the deep-seated conception of regarding the fellow countrymen in the north as the principal enemy," the major newspaper of Rodong Sinmun said in a signed commentary.

"Both the expression of 'the principal enemy' and 'a substantial military threat' strongly smack of bitterness toward the North", the commentary went on.

The commentary accused the new expression of "imbuing the South Korea's military's idea of confrontation is little short of the revelation of their intention to go against national reconciliation and unity and pursue inter-Korean confrontation and war."

"Hostility toward fellow countrymen will bring nothing but national disaster," it warned.

(Xinhua News Agency February 6, 2005)