Kim Jong-un was seen taking a boat trip to the platoon that shelled a South Korean island in pictures released on Friday as North Korea ramped up its aggressive rhetoric towards the South.
State news agency KCNA reported Kim told soldiers they could be called upon to "annihilate the enemy" at any time, and North Korea said it was ending its peace pact with South Korea after UN sanctions.
In 2010 North Korea fired scores of artillery shells at a South Korean island, killing two soldiers. It was one of the heaviest attacks on the South since the Korean War ended in 1953.
The Security Council's unanimous vote to toughen sanctions in response to North Korea's third nuclear test provoked a bellicose response from the nation.
Before the vote the country warned of a pre-emptive strike against their "aggressors", threats reiterated after the sanctions, as they pledged to retaliate with "crushing strikes" to anyone who dared trespass onto their territory, adding they will cancel nuclear disarmament agreements with the South.
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Seven years of UN sanctions against North Korea have done nothing to derail Pyongyang’s drive for a nuclear weapon capable of hitting the United States. They may have even bolstered the Kim family by giving their propaganda maestros ammunition to whip up anti-US sentiment and direct attention away from government failures.
However although the US said it was taking North Korean threats seriously, it added that they were "not unusual."
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