Kim Yo Jong, sister of North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un. Reuters
Kim Yo Jong, sister of North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un. Reuters
North Korea slammed the United Nations Security Council on Sunday for debating its latest satellite launch in response to a “gangster-like US request,” vowing to resist sanctions and take steps to defend itself.
The US requested a UN Security Council meeting last week to address North Korea’s failed effort to launch its first spy satellite into orbit, which resulted in the launcher and payload crashing into the sea.
Kim Yo Jong, North Korea’s sister and a key ruling party official, stated that by approving Washington’s “gangster-like request” and dismissing North Korea’s right to space development, the Security Council demonstrated that it was a “political appendage” of the US.
“I am very unpleased that the UNSC so often calls to account the DPRK’s exercise of its rights as a sovereign state at the request of the US, and bitterly condemn and reject it as the most unfair and biased act of interfering in its internal affairs and violating its sovereignty,” Kim said in a statement carried by the state KCNA news agency.
The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DRRK) is North Korea’s official name.
Referring to the satellite launch, she said North Korea had a right to defend itself against threats from the US and its allies, which it says are ramping up tension with military exercises.
UN sanctions resolutions are a “product of hostile policy of the US and its vassal forces” and North Korea would never acknowledge them, she said, pledging to exercise sovereign rights, including launching spy satellites.
In another dispatch, KCNA published a commentary it said was by international affairs analyst Kim Myong Chol criticising a resolution adopted by the International Maritime Organization’s (IMO) security committee that “strongly” condemned North Korea’s missile tests as a serious threat to seafarers and international shipping.
The analyst accused the IMO of being “completely politicised” in line with hostile US-led policy.
Later on Sunday, South Korea’s Defence Minister Lee Jong-sup met his Japanese counterpart, Yasukazu Hamada, at a security conference in Singapore, and condemned the satellite launch and agreed to boost security cooperation.
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