North Korea accused South Korean new president, Park Geun-Hye, of provocation after she warned Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear weapons or face collapse.

North Korea accused South Korean new president, Park Geun-Hye, of provocation after she warned Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear weapons or face collapse.

The communist country said that Park was following the anti-North stance of her predecessor Lee Myung-Bak.

"If she keeps to the road of confrontation like traitor Lee, defying the warnings of the DPRK (North Korea), she will meet a miserable ruin,” the North's Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea, a state body in charge of propaganda and inter-Korean affairs, said.

The committee urged Park to "behave with discretion, clearly mindful that a wrong word may entail horrible disaster" at a time of elevated military tensions on the Korean peninsula.

"The present chief executive of South Korea made invectives slandering the DPRK," it said, referring to her speech Tuesday marking the third anniversary of the sinking of a naval vessel by what Seoul insists was a North Korean submarine.

Park warned North Korea that its only "path to survival" lay in abandoning its nuclear and missile programs, and urged Pyongyang to "change course".

The North's committee slammed Park's "confrontational rhetoric", saying it was "an unpardonable provocation... and a blatant challenge.