North Korea’s state media accused the US on Friday of double standards over military activities and pursuing a hostile policy towards Pyongyang that was hampering the restart of talks on the country’s nuclear weapons and missile programmes.
The commentary comes after North Korea and South Korea both test-fired ballistic missiles on Wednesday, the newest move in a race during which both nations are developing increasingly sophisticated weapons. read more
Washington condemned the North Korean test – and its separate test days earlier of what experts said might be its first aircraft capable of carrying an atomic warhead – as a threat to its neighbors, but didn’t mention Seoul’s test of a submarine-launched missile (SLBM).
In a piece of writing published by the official KCNA press agency, Kim Myong Chol, whom it described as an “international affairs analyst”, said the US had “stirred up a terrific furor” by presenting North Korea’s actions as “threats to international peace and security”.
“Terming them armed provocations timed to a particular occasion and aiming at a selected target, it faulted those measures which belong to our right to self-defense. This arrogant and self-righteous response may be a vivid revelation of the American-style double-dealing attitude,” Kim said.
“Today its high-handed practices have gone beyond the limit.”
Little is understood about Kim, though KCNA has often carried commentaries under his name and a few South Korean media reports have described him as a Japan-based “unofficial spokesman” for the North, officially called the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK).
He said Washington was responsible for the stand-off preventing the restart of talks aimed toward dismantling North Korea’s nuclear and missile arsenals reciprocally for sanctions relief.
“Even though contacts and dialogues are undertaken now, it’s certain that the U.S. would raise the double-dealing yardstick by which it might call our acts for self-defense ‘threats’ to the planet peace and its allies,” Kim said.
“Unless the U.S. vouches for the withdrawal of its hostile policy toward the DPRK, the word denuclearization can never be placed on the table.”
His comments were in line with a press release on Wednesday by Kim Yo Jong, the powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, who lashed out at South Korea for criticizing the North’s “routine defensive measures” while developing its own missiles.
North Korea has been steadily developing its weapons systems, raising the stakes for the negotiations that were initiated between Kim Jong Un and former U.S. President Donald Trump in 2018 and have stalled since 2019.
