North Korea warned rival South Korea it risks triggering a "destructive" showdown and accused the United States of abusing its power on the U.N. Security Council, in a fiery...a single two-syllable word carrying connotations of both incoherence and viciousness. A fiery delivery implies an audience of rubes and yokels, preferably forming up into a mob...
address Tuesday.
Hours after South Korea paraded a missile capable of pinpoint strikes across the border, North Korea's Vice Foreign Minister Pak Kil-Yon said his government's "generous" efforts to improve relations had hit a "confrontational approach" from the South.
Pak told the U.N. General Assembly meeting of world leaders and senior ministers that the South's attitude is "creating the danger of driving relations back into a destructive stage again."
Amid signs that North Korea is expanding production of weapons grade fissile material, South Korea's President Park Geun-Hye said earlier in Seoul that the North's nuclear bombs pose a "grave threat".
To reinforce the state of alert, South Korea showed off a new missile capable of high-precision strikes at a parade in the capital which was attended by U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel.
The North Korean minister said "U.S. hostile policy" was the cause of tensions on the Korean peninsula and accused the United States of forcing through U.N. sanctions over a ballistic rocket launch.
The U.N. Security Council extended sanctions against the North in January for launching a rocket considered equivalent to a long range missile and after the North's third nuclear arms test in February.
"It represents a typical example of how and for what purpose the power of the U.N. Security Council is being abused," Pak said, accusing the United States, one of five permanent members of the council, of "manipulation".
"The instances of the U.N. Security Council being abused by a certain state as a tool of its strategic interests should never go unchallenged," Pak said.
The sanctions followed weeks of talks between the United States and China, the North's key ally.