TIL Desk/World/Pyongyang-The top North Korean official for US relations today said that his country is now a nuclear threat to be reckoned with, and Washington can expect more nuclear tests and missile launches like the ones earlier this week as long as it attempts to force his government’s collapse through a policy of pressure and punishment.
“It’s the United States that caused this issue,” Han Song Ryol, director-general of the department of US affairs at North Korea’s Foreign Ministry, told in his first interview with an American news organisation since assuming the post three years ago. “They have to stop their military threats, sanctions and economic pressure. Without doing so, it’s like they are telling us to reconcile while they are putting a gun to our forehead.” Han defended the North’s test-launching on Wednesday of two medium-range ballistic missiles.
Foreign military experts believe that, once perfected, such missiles could deliver nuclear warheads to US bases in Japan and possibly to major US military installations as far away as the Pacific island of Guam, where long-range US Air Force bombers are deployed. The tests indicated technological advances in the North’s missile capabilities. They were quickly condemned by Washington, Tokyo and Seoul as a “provocation” and a violation of United Nations resolutions. State Department spokesman John Kirby said US policy calling for the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula hasn’t changed.
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