President Yoon Suk Yeol said North Korea's provocative actions will be met with "punishment of severalfold," in response to the regime's repeated military provocations since the start of the new year.

Presiding over a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday, Yoon stressed that threats requiring South Korea to choose between war and peace will no longer stand.

Referring to Pyongyang announcing that it will not recognize the de facto maritime border of the Northern Limit Line(NLL) earlier in the day, Yoon said securing "fake peace" by surrendering to the regime's threats would place the nation's security in greater danger.

As for North Korean leader Kim Jong-un calling for a constitutional amendment to define South Korea as the number one hostile country, Yoon said the regime has acknowledged that it is against its own people and history.

Yoon, however, emphasized that it is the North Korean regime and not the people that threaten the South, calling them South Korean citizens under the Constitution who hold the same rights to enjoy liberty, human rights and prosperity.

The president ordered the unification ministry in charge of inter-Korean affairs to push for the designation of a "North Korean Defectors' Day," as part of efforts to give attention to and support for their settlement in the country.