Meanwhile, South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-Se has said deployment of the missile system is purely defensive and poses no threat to China’s security interests.
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Ri insisted that the North was a “responsible nuclear state” which would only strike if threatened, and he called on the United States to withdraw its troops from South Korea immediately.
“THAAD is most certainly not a simple technical issue, but an out-and-out strategic one”, Wang said late on Sunday on the sidelines of a conference of foreign ministers from the 10-member Association of South East Asian Nations in Vientiane.
As such, it makes more sense for Pyongyang to “play the waiting game…to see Trump’s possibility of winning the contest as an opportunity to do what North Korea has historically always done: dividing the US from regional partners”.
North Korea was already bound by USA and United Nations sanctions in response to its nuclear weapons tests.
CCTV on Tuesday reported extensively on a crackdown on South Korean cosmetics that were smuggled through Dalian port. A smuggler who was arrested says on camera, “Chinese tourists who visit South Korea buy cosmetics products in Myeong-dong [Seoul’s famous shopping district], but these products can’t be trusted”.
“Some grumble among themselves about the nature of the state’s claims”, they added, “justifiably pointing out that not even a three-year-old would believe that the South would attack us with snakes over [anti-regime] propaganda leaflets or CDs”.
North Korea carried out a number of nuclear tests and rocket launches leading up to the Workers’ Party congress this May.
Washington’s top diplomat John Kerry also held talks with linchpin ally South Korea in Vientiane, with both sides describing relations as closer than ever in the face of Pyongyang’s sabre-rattling.
Minister Ri also criticized Seoul’s recent decision to deploy an advanced US anti-missile system in South Korea.
A source in the province told South Korean news agency, the Daily NK, the Pyongyang government blames South Korea’s National Intelligence Service for the infestation. Pyongyang and Beijing’s foreign ministers held their first bilateral talks in two years on the sidelines of the ASEAN Regional Forum, the only security forum that the North Korean delegation regularly attends.
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Wang’s rhetoric continues to raise the questions about whether the protection THAAD can provide South Korea outweighs the diplomatic rifts it is sending throughout the region.
