Conflicts & War

North Korea urges UN to stop Washington-Seoul joint drills

Seoul, Mar 5 (EFE).- North Korea on Sunday urged the United Nations to call for a stop to joint military exercises by the United States and South Korea as a first step to normalizing the situation, insisting that such drills were raising tensions.

In a statement released on Sunday by state news agency KCNA, North Korea’s Vice Minister for International Organizations of the Foreign Ministry, Kim Son-gyong, accused Seoul and Washington of taking the situation in the Korean peninsula to an “extremely dangerous level through threatening rhetoric and military demonstration against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea).”

The US and South Korea on Friday carried out their fourth joint air exercises in 2023, deploying an American strategic B-1 bomber and South Korean fighter jets, as part of a series of deployments and military drills held by the allies this year.

The two militaries are also planning to carry out a large-scale drill spread over more than 10 days starting Mar. 13, an exercise which usually elicits an aggressive response by Pyongyang including weapons tests, as the regime considers it a direct threat to its sovereignty.

North Korea remonstrated with the UN for “consistently keeping mum” on Washington and Seoul’s military displays, alleging that they even talk about “the end of a state (North Korea).”

It also complained that the world body simultaneously dubbed North Korea’s “self-defensive reaction as ‘provocative and threat’.”

“Frequent joint drills of the US and South Korea, which set such unrealistic and extremely dangerous purpose as ‘regime end’ of a sovereign state (…) are vivid evidence that helps (us) have a clear understanding of why the vicious cycle of tension has lasted in the Korean peninsula,” the statement said.

It added that if the UN was really interested in ensuring peace and security, it should “no longer tolerate” the “anti-peace deeds” of the allies.

The North Korean vice minister warned that the “situation in the Korean peninsula and the region was developing towards a very worrisome orientation (that) no one wants,” and urged the international community to call for an immediate halt to the drills as “first step for promoting sustainable detente (peace) in the region. EFE

asb-mra/ia

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