The North Korean foreign ministry released a statement on Christmas Eve.
North Korea has described sanctions imposed on the country by the United Nations as “an act of war” and warned of its capability of “posing a substantial nuclear threat to the U.S. mainland” in a statement posted by its foreign ministry on Sunday.
The statement was delivered in response to sanctions imposed on North Korea on Friday following the latest of several missile tests and published on the website of the official KCNA news agency.
The sanctions, drafted by the United States, seek to severely limit North Korea’s oil and petroleum exports, impacting on the country’s nuclear programme as a result.
In response, North Korea described the sanctions as “tantamount to a complete economic blockade”, “a grave infringement upon the sovereignty of our Republic” and as “an act of war violating peace and stability in the Korean peninsula”.
The statement criticised the United States for “making it its daily business to carry on military threats and blackmail in every region to realise its preposterous dream of hegemony over the world” and warned that the sanctions could be a “fatal blunder” on the United States’ behalf.
“There is no more fatal blunder than the miscalculation that the U.S. and its followers could check by already worn-out “sanctions” the victorious advance of our people who have brilliantly accomplished the great historic cause of completing the state nuclear force, the cause of building a rocket power capable of coping with any nuclear war against the U.S.,” the statement read.
“No matter how crazy the U.S. and the hostile forces become in their manoeuvres against our country, our Republic that advances with the great power of the invincible single-minded unity around the great leader, the strongest military force and the self-reliance and self-development will always shine as the powerful country and the fortress of independence in politics, self-support in the economy and self-reliance in defence,” the statement concluded.
You can read it in full here.
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