North Korea on Friday launched a vicious personal attack on the South Korean foreign minister, calling him an idiot and traitor who begs for tougher international pressure on its nuclear ambitions.

The invective came amid heightening tensions following the North's test of a new ballistic missile on Feb. 12 and the death of leader Kim Jong-un's half-brother in Malaysia last week.

The North's Central Committee of the Democratic Front for the Reunification of Korea denounced Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se's speech during a security conference last week in Munich, where he said that the tipping point may not be too far off before the North's nuclear weaponization.

"Yun Byung-se spouted rubbish, regardless of whom he was meeting, that the nuclear issue of the North is like a time bomb, the North's nukes will reach the critical phase of actual deployment in one or two years and now is the last opportunity to stop it," the committee said in a statement. 

"What Yun uttered to take issue with the nuclear deterrent of the DPRK is no more than nonsense by an idiot ignorant of how peace is being preserved on the Korean Peninsula," it added. DPRK is short for the North's official name -- the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

It also threatened that what it sees as such a "desperate" action will only bolster its move to emerge as "the strongest power of self-reliance and self-development." (Yonhap)