Tensions on the Korean peninsula further intensified on Friday as North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un warned that his country was in a "quasi-state of war" with the South.

The heated rhetoric follows Thursday's exchange of artillery fire at the heavily fortified border between the two Koreas, an escalation of the latest propaganda war at the line that has divided the two countries since the armistice that halted the Korean War in 1953.

Kim on Friday chaired an emergency meeting of the powerful Central Military Commission, and the Korean People's Army has "entered into a wartime state," according to the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), the totalitarian regime's mouthpiece, USA Today reported.

Pyongyang has given South Korea until 5 p.m. on Saturday to end propaganda broadcasts at the border and remove banks of loudspeakers, or face military consequences, an ultimatum endorsed by the Central Military Commission, USA Today noted.

Foreign diplomats and military attachés in the North Korean capital, meanwhile, were summoned to an "emergency situation briefing" at which Kim Yong Chol, a senior military officer, sought their support for the North's demand that the anti-Pyongyang broadcasts across the Demilitarized Zone be ended, the Associated Press reported.

Kim, who serves as director of the general reconnaissance bureau of the Korean People's Army, urged the diplomats to disregard what he called "baseless fabrications" that North Korea had tried to destroy a loudspeaker on the southern side of the border on Thursday.

South Korean Defense Minister Han Min Goo warned that Pyongyang was likely to launch "provocations" if Seoul did not meet the deadline to end the broadcasts, according to Fox News. An unidentified government source, meanwhile, told the South Korean news agency Yonhap that in the midst of the crisis, the North may be preparing the test-firing of short and mid-range and ballistic missiles.

North Korea "is showing signs of lifting off a Scud missile near Wonsan and a Rodong missile in the North Pyeongan Province," the source said. "It seems that it is weighing the timing of the firing under its strategic intention to increase military tension on the Korean Peninsula to the highest level."

As a result of the rising tensions between the two countries, the U.S. has cancelled the upcoming military exercises with South Korea, Defense Department officials informed the AP.