North Korea said this week that the United States was pushing the country toward “an extreme level or explosion” and that it would be justified if it answered with “tough counter-measures.”
North Korea issued the statement after the country fired a missile over Japan’s Kokkaido island and into the ocean. Japan, South Korea and the United States all criticized the missile test.
"My country and I know a number of other countries are going to continue to demand that North Korea ends these provocative acts and take a different path," said U.S. disarmament ambassador Robert Wood.
But North Korea said the U.S. has shown “hostile policy” by working with South Korea on military drills on the peninsula and in President Donald Trump’s warning that North Korea would face “fire and fury” if the country threatened the U.S.
"It is an undeniable fact that the U.S. is driving the situation of the Korean peninsula towards an extreme level of explosion by deploying huge strategic assets around the peninsula, by conducting a series of nuclear war drills and maintaining nuclear freeze and blackmail for over half a century," Han Tae Song, North Korea’s ambassador to the U.N. told the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva.
"And the U.S. should be wholly responsible for the catastrophic consequences it will entail."
Wood and South Korea’s envoy Kim Inchul are asking for Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea, to resume negotiations on giving up the country’s nuclear arsenal.
Photo: In this handout photo released by the United States Forces Korea, South Korea's Hyunmu-2 Missile System (L) firing a tactical ballistic missile during a U.S. and South Korea joint missile drill aimed to counter North Korea¡¯s intercontinental ballistic missile test on July 5, 2017 in East Coast, South Korea. The U.S. Army and South Korean military responded to North Korea's missile launch with a combined ballistic missile exercise on Wednesday, into South Korean waters along the country's eastern coastline.
Photo courtesy: United States Forces Korea via Getty Images
Publication date: August 29, 2017