North Korea warns forum of ‘actual war’
• Nation called a pariah as it tells disarmament summit of weapons expansion plan
North Korea says it will pursue its nuclear deterrent and weapons programme as huge US-South Korean military exercises, which it says model a “pre-emptive nuclear attack” against Pyongyang, continue.
South Korea and the US, which led condemnation of North Korea’s latest missile tests at the Conference on Disarmament, said their military drills were to test defensive readiness against possible aggression from the North.
On Tuesday, North Korean diplomat Ju Yong-choi told the UN-backed forum that the allies’ annual exercises were “a major cause of escalation of tension that might turn into actual war”.
“The DPRK [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea] is firm in its determination to further bolster its defence capabilities with a nuclear deterrent as a pivot so as to put an end to danger of nuclear war caused by the US,” the diplomat said.
During the 90-minute session, envoys from more than 20 countries including North Korea’s main ally China, as well as Britain, France, Russia and the US, condemned North Korea’s test-firing of four ballistic missiles on Monday.
Japanese ambassador Nobushige Takamizawa said it was “totally unacceptable” that the missiles had landed off Japan’s northwest coast. They posed “a direct and grave threat to Japan’s security and a serious danger for aviation and navigation”.
US disarmament ambassador Robert Wood condemned the tests as North Korea’s latest violation of UN Security Council resolutions. He described Pyongyang’s weapons programme as a “clear threat to the national security of every country of the region”.
He said the DPRK was a “pariah” and an “outlier” in violation of multiple UN Security Council resolutions and “the countries represented in this room are not going to stand by and just let the DPRK violate international law”.
The US started to deploy the first elements of its advanced anti-missile defence system known as THAAD (terminal high-altitude area defence) in South Korea on Tuesday, the US Pacific Command said.
“THAAD is purely defensive; that is the only defence measure we can take facing the massive threat posed by DPRK,” South Korea disarmament ambassador Kim In-chul said.
But China’s ambassador, Fu Cong, said Beijing firmly opposed the deployment of THAAD “and will take necessary measures to safeguard its own security interests”.
“All parties concerned should work together for the denuclearisation of the [Korean] peninsula and its peace and stability,” Fu said.
South Korea’s Lotte Group has come under pressure in China for providing land to host the system. Chinese protesters have held demonstrations denouncing the conglomerate. South Korean news agency Yonhap reported that Chinese authorities had shut 39 of Lotte’s retail outlets in the country, citing fire-safety concerns.
The THAAD system is meant to intercept and destroy shortand medium-range ballistic missiles during their final phase of flight.