North Korea vows harsh retaliation over sanctions
SEOUL — North Korea vowed Monday to bolster its nuclear arsenal and gain revenge of a “thousand-fold” against the United States in response to tough UN sanctions.
The warning came two days after the UN Security Council unanimously approved new sanctions to punish North Korea, including a ban on coal and other exports worth more than $1 billion. The U.S. ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, called the U.S.-drafted resolution “the single largest economic sanctions package ever levelled against” North Korea.
In a statement carried by the North’s state-run Korean Central News Agency, North Korea’s government said the sanctions were a “violent infringement of its sovereignty” that was caused by a “heinous U.S. plot to isolate and stifle” the country. “We will make the U.S. pay by a thousand-fold for all the heinous crimes it commits against the state and people of this country,” the statement said.
The North said it would take an unspecified “resolute action of justice” and would never place its nuclear program on the negotiating table or “flinch an inch” from its push to strengthen its nuclear deterrence as long as U.S. hostility against North Korea persists.
North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho made similar comments during an annual regional security conference in Manila on Monday.
The forum was closed to the press, so it could not be determined whether the speech was actually delivered as prepared and labelled on a six-page copy given to reporters.
In the printed version of the speech, Ri said that the entire U.S. mainland is within firing range of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, which is North Korea’s official name. He said Pyongyang would use nuclear weapons only against the United States or any other country that might join it in military action against North Korea.