The council reiterated its demand that North Korea end its “flagrant” violations, halt all nuclear tests and ballistic missile activity, and comply with five United Nations sanctions resolutions imposed since the country’s first nuclear test in 2006.
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Han said North Korea has never recognized a longstanding United Nations Security Council ban on its testing of nuclear weapons or long-range missiles, though the world body has ratified the resolutions and imposed heavy sanctions on North Korea for continuing them – including a round of new sanctions imposed after its latest nuclear test in January.
“The United States must see correctly the trend of the times and the strategic position of (North Korea) and must withdraw its hostile policy”, he said in the hour-long interview at the Foreign Ministry, located next to Kim Il Sung Square in central Pyongyang.
North and South Korea have technically been at war for decades, and Seoul has rejected recent overtures for peace talks with Pyongyang as an “insincere” propaganda ploy.
The U.N. Security Council met on Wednesday evening to discuss the missile launches.
North Korea’s state media on Thursday celebrated the success of a mid-range ballistic missile test conducted June 22. On Thursday, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un hailed the launch of Hwasong-10 and warned that his country was fully capable of striking US interests in the Pacific, state media reported.
North Korea this week conducted its most successful tests to date of a powerful home-grown missile it hopes will one day be capable of launching nuclear attacks on the USA mainland. North Korea’s test could bring louder calls to move up these timetables.
Seoul and Washington are now in talks about deploying the advanced US Thaad (terminal high-altitude air defence) missile system in South Korea – a move opposed by China. The ballistic missile tests have added to that anger and North Korea’s total disregard of the five sanctions resolutions which are legally binding.
Seoul and Washington are now in talks about deploying the advanced US THAAD missile system in South Korea – a move vehemently opposed by China.
He told the AP that without doing so, the U.S.is telling North Korea to reconcile while it’s putting a gun to the North’s forehead.
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Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in California, said the international community had to find a way to get Pyongyang to accept a missile test moratorium. Tokyo thinks the missile could hit Japan if the launch angle were adjusted.
