Pyongyang: latest missile test not directed at any country

SEOUL, Oct 21 (EFE).- North Korea criticized Thursday the United States’ response to the missile test it carried out this week and said these are not directed against any country and are legitimate self-defence exercises.

A spokesman for the North Korean Foreign Ministry published a statement via the KCNA agency in which he said the launch of a ballistic missile for a submarine carried out Monday “did not pose any threat or damage to the security of neighboring countries and the region.”

The spokesman, whose name is not specified, criticized Washington calling the launch a “threat” and taking “very provocative actions such as calling an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council”.

“As has already been made clear, the deterrence of (North Korea) is not aimed at a specific state or forces, but at preventing the war itself and defending sovereign rights,” the letter read.

In keeping with North Korea’s latest weapons tests (it has conducted five in five weeks since mid-September), the regime displayed a new rhetoric in which it insists on its right to self-defense and avoids marking Seoul and Washington as enemies, having accused them of “double standards.”

The three countries are technically still at war, since the conflict that openly confronted them between 1950 and 1953 was closed with a ceasefire instead of a peace treaty.

“Criticizing (North Korea) for developing and testing the same weapons system that the US owns or is developing is a clear expression of double standards and only arouses our reluctance about the ‘authenticity’ of its claim that it does not seek to antagonize the US,” the spokesman added.

This new message thus underscores Pyongyang’s renewed effort for the international community to begin to judge its weapons tests in the same way that it values ??those of Seoul or Washington.

The regime has for the moment rejected the repeated offers made this year by Washington to meet without preconditions to try to resume the dialogue on denuclearization, stalled since 2019, arguing that the US maintains its “hostile attitude”.

Seoul has raised the possibility of promoting the signing of a peace treaty between the three parties, a proposal that, if crystallized, could bring the isolated country back to the dialogue table. EFE

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