SEOUL: North Korea said on Monday that the UN Security Council showed a double standard as its sanctions committee criticised the country’s recent missile test as a violation of UN resolutions.
North Korea launched a new type of tactical short-range ballistic missile last week, prompting Washington to request a gathering of the UN Security Council’s (UNSC) sanctions committee.
At the committee meeting on Friday, the United States called for imposing additional sanctions and tightening the implementation of existing measures, denouncing the test as a violation of UN resolutions, according to Jo Chol Su, director-general for international organisations at North Korea’s foreign ministry.
Jo said the meeting was “designed to negate the right of our state to self-defence,” warning it would devise a “countermeasure.”
“It constitutes a denial of sovereign state and an apparent double standard that UNSC takes issue, on the basis of the U.N. ‘resolutions’ – direct products of the U.S. hostile policy,” Jo said in a statement carried by the official KCNA news agency.
“It does not make any sense that only our righteous self-defensive measure should be singled out for denunciation, when many other countries across the globe are firing all kinds of projectiles for the purpose of increasing their military strength.”
The statement came after North Korea said on Saturday that the administration of US President Joe Biden had taken a wrong first step and revealed “deep-seated hostility” by criticising its self-defensive missile test.
North Korea launched two suspected ballistic missiles into the sea near Japan on Thursday, underscoring steady progess in its weapons programme and ramping up pressure on the new US administration as it reviews North Korea policy.
The launches came just days after North Korea fired several cruise missiles in an exercise that Biden said was not provocative but “business as usual”.
The Biden administration is in the final stages of its North Korea policy review and has been simultaneously signalling a hard line on human rights, denuclearisation and sanctions, while making diplomatic overtures that have been rebuffed by Pyongyang.
