At UN, North Korea says the US made 2023 more dangerous

North Korea accused the United States on Tuesday of making 2023 an “extremely dangerous year,” saying its actions are trying to provoke a nuclear war and denouncing both U.S. and South Korean leaders for “hysterical remarks of confrontation” that it says are raising the temperature in the region.

Kim Song, North Korea's U.N. ambassador, also said Washington was trying to create “the Asian version of NATO,” the military alliance that includes European nations and the United States and Canada.

Kim came out swinging in his speech to world leaders with harsher words than he brought to the same U.N. General Assembly meeting last year. Such strong language is always noteworthy from a nation developing its nuclear program — but is also hardly uncommon from Pyongyang, a government that sometimes weaponizes hyperbole in its public statements.

“Owing to the reckless and continued hysteria of nuclear showdown on the part of the U.S. and its following forces, the year 2023 has been recorded as an extremely dangerous year that the military security situation in and around the Korean peninsula was driven closer to the brink of a nuclear war,” Kim said.

“The United States is now moving on to the practical stage of realizing its a sinister intention to provoke a nuclear war,” Kim said. He said the United States' attempt to create an “Asian NATO” was effectively introducing a “new Cold War structure to northeast Asia.”

Kim took particular issue with what he called U.S. and South Korean statements that he said were about “the end of the regime” and the “occupation of Pyongyang,” the capital of what the country calls the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

North Korea itself said just last month that it had rehearsed how it might occupy South Korean territory in the event of a war. Those statements came after North Korea's military said it fired two tactical ballistic missiles from Pyongyang to practice “scorched earth strikes” at major South Korean command centers and operational airfields.

The North said its missile tests were a response to a U.S. flyover of longrange B-1B bombers for a joint training with close ally South Korea. The North periodically launches missiles it says are tests, often in response to a perceived provocation from the United States or the South.

Later Tuesday, the deputy U.N. ambassador of South Korea, known formally as the Republic of Korea, dismissed all of North Korea's claims as absurd.

“Do you really believe, as DPRK claims, that the RoK, along with the United States, conspires to provoke nuclear war?” Kim Sangjin asked the Assembly in a rebuttal. “How many member states in this chamber are seriously aligned with the DPRK's false assertions?”

North Korea's appearances at the United Nations are often illuminating, despite the absence of leader Kim Jong Un or other high-level officials, given that hearing words directly from the mouths of the country's leaders — however carefully reviewed and calibrated — is a relatively uncommon occurrence on the international stage.