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A North Korean official indicated Pyongyang will unleash more threats if Seoul sticks to its tough policy toward the communist state, a pro-Pyongyang online newspaper in Los Angeles said Sunday.

North Korea has stepped up its rhetoric and threats against Seoul since late last month, in what analysts say is an attempt to push conservative President Lee Myung-bak, who took office on Feb.

25, into the engagement policy of his two liberal predecessors.

Angered by Lee's pledges to link further inter-Korean economic projects to the North's denuclearization, as well as strengthen Seoul's alliance with Washington, Pyongyang tested short-range missiles, expelled South Korean officials from its territory, and threatened to cut off dialogue and turn the South into "ashes."

"The South Korean government will face a more intensive measure if it keeps going on the anti-national and anti-reunification path, ignoring the spirit of the June 15 Summit Declaration and denying the Oct. 4 Summit Declaration," Choe Song-ik, a chief councilor of the North's Committee for the Fatherland Reunification, told the Minjok Tongshin.

He referred to the agreements on inter-Korean peace and reconciliation reached at the past two rounds of summit talks held in 2000 and 2007.

"There is no other way but to fulfill the June 15 and Oct. 4 declarations if the Lee Myung-bak regime wants to survive," he said in the interview conducted on Wednesday.

The two Koreas agreed to expand the South Korea-funded joint industrial complex in Kaesong, a North Korean border town, and other cooperation projects during the second summit talks between their leaders.

North Korea had urged the Seoul government to abide by the summit accords months before Lee took office.

Also on Sunday, the Rodong Shinmun, the daily of the North Korean Workers' Party, urged the Seoul government to end its "confrontational policy" toward Pyongyang and begin implementing the summit accords "before it becomes too late."

The newspaper threatened that Lee and his Cabinet ministers will "pay a high cost" for their "reckless behavior."

SEOUL, April 20 (Yonhap)