South Korea tightens media security after threat from North Korea

South Korean police have tightened security around major TV stations and newspapers after North Korea threatened "special actions" to attack them. AFP reports that the North's military vowed to turn parts of Seoul into ashes, accusing the conservative President Lee Myung-Bak and several media outlets of defaming its leadership and distorting public opinion in the South. It said the unspecified actions targeting "the Lee Myung-Bak group of traitors... and conservative media" will "reduce all... to ashes in three or four minutes... by unprecedented peculiar means and methods of our own style". Police have deployed some 200 officers around the Dong-A Ilbo newspaper as well as the KBS, MBC and YTN TV stations cited in the North's statement, a police officer told AFP on condition of anonymity. South Korea's military has also strengthened security against potential attacks, a foreign ministry spokesman said Tuesday, adding Seoul would "definitely retaliate" against any aggression.