UNITED NATIONS (AP) — North Korea’s UN ambassador Kim Song has defended his country’s recent long-range missile launch at the UN Security Council where he also accused the United States of driving the situation in northeast Asia “to the brink of nuclear war.”
Kim Song told the council that Wednesday’s test-flight of the developmental Hwasong-18 missile was a legitimate exercise of the North’s right to self-defense. He said the United States was raising regional tensions with nuclear threats and deploying a nuclear-powered submarine to South Korea for the first time in 14 years.
Kim said the missile launch had “no negative effect on the security of a neighboring country,” pointing to Japan’s announcement that the ICBM — which flew at a steep angle — landed in open waters outside Japan’s exclusive economic zone.
Immediately before the meeting, a statement from nine council members including the U.S. and Japan, joined by South Korea, was read to reporters condemning the launch “in the strongest possible terms” and stressing that it was the 20th ballistic missile launch this year in blatant violation of multiple Security Council resolutions banning such tests.
In Pyongyang, the sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, slammed the UN Security Council for convening a meeting to “pick a quarrel with” her country’s self-defense step while ignoring the U.S. push to increase the danger of a nuclear war. In a statement carried by state media, Kim Yo Jong called the council “a new Cold War mechanism totally inclined to the U.S. and the West.”
She also warned that the United States would pay a price for its hostility toward the North. “I do not conceal the fact that very unlucky things will wait for the U.S.”.