The U.N. Security Council unanimously imposed new sanctions on North Korea on Friday for its recent intercontinental ballistic missile test.
“The latest U.N. sanctions against North Korea are an act of war and tantamount to a complete economic blockade against it”, North Korea’s foreign ministry said on Sunday, threatening to punish those who supported the measure.
The U.N. Security Council unanimously imposed new sanctions on North Korea on Friday for its recent intercontinental ballistic missile test, seeking to limit its access to refined petroleum products and crude oil and its earnings from workers abroad. In a statement carried by the official KCNA news agency, North Korea’s foreign ministry said the United States was terrified by its nuclear force and was getting “more and more frenzied in the moves to impose the harshest-ever sanctions and pressure on our country”. The new resolution was tantamount to a complete economic blockade of North Korea, the ministry said. “We define this ‘sanctions resolution’ rigged up by the U.S. and its followers as a grave infringement upon the sovereignty of our Republic, as an act of war violating peace and stability in theKorean peninsula and the region and categorically reject the ‘resolution’,” it said. “There is no more fatal blunder than the miscalculation that the U.S. and its followers could check by already worn-out ‘sanctions’ the victorious advance of our people who have brilliantly accomplished the great historic cause of completing the state nuclear force”, the ministry said.
The North Korean foreign ministry said its nuclear weapons were a self-defensive deterrence not in contradiction of international law. “We will further consolidate our self-defensive nuclear deterrence aimed at fundamentally eradicating the U.S. nuclear threats, blackmail and hostile moves by establishing the practical balance of force with the U.S,” it said. “The U.S. should not forget even a second the entity of the DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) which rapidly emerged as a strategic state capable of posing a substantial nuclear threat to the U.S. mainland,” it added. “Those countries that raised their hands in favor of this ‘sanctions resolution’ shall be held completely responsible for all the consequences to be caused by the ‘resolution’ and we will make sure for ever and ever that they pay heavy price for what they have done.”
China, with which North Korea does some 90 percent of its trade, has repeatedly called for calm and restraint from all sides. China said on Saturday the new resolution also reiterated the need for a peaceful resolution via talks and that all sides needed to take steps to reduce tensions. “The difference between the new resolution and the original U.S. proposal reflects the will of China and Russia to prevent war and chaos on the Korean Peninsula. If the U.S. proposals were accepted, only war is foreseeable,” it said in an editorial.
U.S. diplomats have made clear they are seeking a diplomatic solution but proposed the new, tougher sanctions resolution to ratchet up pressure on North Korea’s leader. Ultimately seeking a door through which North Korea may join the nuclear club round table in a manner that not only restructures the US foreign policy in Asia, but also saves face using the UN resolution as a buffer in its bullish stand, specially that the North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Nov. 29 declared that the nuclear force is complete after the test of North Korea’s largest-ever ICBM test, which the country said puts all of the United States within range.
