North Korea ramped up its bashing campaign of the South’s President Lee Myung-bak, with its broadcasting station airing images of North Korean soldiers shooting at paper targets marked with Lee’s name and campaign phrases.

The state-run media (North) Korean Central Television, monitored in Seoul, aired a nighttime program on Monday featuring security soldiers who accused the Lee administration of masterminding an attack on the statues of North Korea founder Kim Il-sung and pledged revenge for what they claim is an “indiscriminate scheme.”

The program also showed images of the soldiers opening fire at paper targets with Lee’s name, parodied images and words of accusations against Lee written on them.

The soldiers were also shown smashing blocks of bricks with bare hands, apparently in a bid to show off their determination, while a military dog was shown lunging toward a human-size rag doll with a name tag of the South Korean president.

The soldiers said, “Every soldier’s heart is filled with bursting rage against U.S. imperialists and Lee Myung-bak’s treacherous party, which carried out the indiscriminate scheme of attempting to insult the highest dignity (of Kim Il-sung) and destroy his statues.”

The North’s unusually heightened bashing campaign came after the two Koreas exchanged a round of tit-for-tat accusations over the alleged statue demolition attempt by a North Korean defector.

Broadcasting a press conference attended by mid-age North Korea defector Jon Yong-chol, North Korea accused Seoul on Friday of ordering Jon to slip back to the home communist country and demolish Kim Il-sung statues.

The South flatly refuted the accusations, charging Pyongyang of raising false accusations. Reports here said Jon, formerly a drug addict and criminal while in the North, may have returned home after failing to adjust to the South and decided to cooperate in the North’s anti-South campaign to avoid punishment for his defection.

The latest shooting simulation launched in Lee’s images is the second of its kind since the North aired a similar one in March.

The first one was aired following the reports that a local military unit put up pictures of new leader Kim Jong-un and late North Korean leader Kim Jong-il as military targets.

The much intensified bashing campaign is widely believed to indicate the North’s intention to further step up its anti-South campaign following the statue-demolition allegations. (Yonhap News)