SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA –
North Korea launched a new type of tactical short-range ballistic missile last week, prompting Washington to request a gathering of the U.N. Security Council’s (UNSC) sanctions committee.
At the committee meeting Friday, the United States called for imposing additional sanctions and tightening the implementation of existing measures, denouncing the test as a violation of U.N. resolutions, according to Jo Chol Su, director-general for international organizations at North Korea’s foreign ministry.
Jo said the meeting was “designed to negate the right of our state to self-defense,” warning it would devise a “countermeasure.”
“It constitutes a denial of sovereign state and an apparent double standard that UNSC takes issue, on the basis of the U.N. ‘resolutions’ — direct products of the U.S. hostile policy,” Jo said in a statement carried by the official KCNA news agency.
“It does not make any sense that only our righteous self-defensive measure should be singled out for denunciation, when many other countries across the globe are firing all kinds of projectiles for the purpose of increasing their military strength.”
The statement came after North Korea said Saturday that the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden had taken a wrong first step and revealed “deep-seated hostility” by criticizing its self-defensive missile test.
