SEOUL: North Korea on Sunday denounced the United Nations Security Council for holding a discussion on a US request on its recent satellite launch and vowed to reject sanctions and take action to defend itself.
Last week, the US requested a UNSC meeting to examine North Korea’s failed attempt to launch its first spy satellite, resulting in the launcher and payload falling into the ocean.
Kim Yo Jong, the sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and a significant member of the governing party, said that the Security Council was acting like a “political appendage” of the US by accepting Washington’s “gangster-like request” and disregarding North Korea’s right to space exploration.
“I bitterly condemn and reject it as the most unfair and biassed act of interfering in its internal affairs and violating its sovereignty,” Kim said in a statement carried by the state-run KCNA news agency. “I am very unpleased that the UNSC calls to account the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DRRK)’s exercise of its rights as a sovereign state at the request of the US, and I am very unhappy that it does so often,” Kim said.
She made reference to the satellite launch and stated that North Korea has a right to protect itself against threats coming from the US and its allies, who it claims are escalating tension by conducting military drills.
She asserted that North Korea will never recognise UN sanctions resolutions, calling them “a product of hostile policy of the U.S. and its vassal forces,” and vowed to assert its sovereign rights, including the launch of surveillance satellites.
In a separate dispatch, KCNA published a commentary that purported to be by international affairs expert Kim Myong Chol, criticising an IMO security committee resolution that “strongly” condemned North Korea’s missile tests as a serious threat to seafarers and international shipping.
According to the expert, hostile US-led policies have “completely politicised” the IMO.
At a security conference in Singapore later that day, South Korean Defence Minister Lee Jong-sup met with his Japanese counterpart, Yasukazu Hamada, and the two agreed to increase security cooperation while denouncing the satellite launch.
