North Korea slams ‘vicious’ US-led UN sanctions

This undated picture released from North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on September 12, 2017 shows North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un (C) attending a photo session with teachers who volunteered to work at branch schools on islands and schools in forefront line and mountainous areas, in Pyongyang. / AFP PHOTO / KCNA VIA KNS / STR / South Korea OUT / REPUBLIC OF KOREA OUT

North Korea on Tuesday blasted “vicious” sanctions imposed by the UN Security Council over its latest and most powerful nuclear test, threatening revenge against Washington, who it blamed for leading the charge.

“Yesterday the Washington regime fabricated the most vicious sanctions resolution,” Pyongyang’s ambassador in Geneva told the UN Conference on Disarmament in the first North Korean reaction to Monday’s unanimous vote.

“My delegation condemns in the strongest terms and categorically rejects the latest illegal … UN Security Council resolution,” ambassador Han Tae Song told the gathering.

“The forthcoming measures by DPRK (the Democratic Republic of Korea) will make the US suffer the greatest pain it has ever experienced in its history,” he said.

The move by the Security Council slaps a ban on textile exports and restricts shipments of oil products to punish Pyongyang for its sixth and largest nuclear test.

The US-drafted sanctions resolution passed just one month after the Security Council decided to ban exports of coal, lead and seafood in response to North Korea’s launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).

The sanctions follow a series of North Korean missile tests in recent months, culminating in an intercontinental ballistic missile that appeared to bring much of the US mainland into range.

It followed up with a sixth nuclear test on September 3, its largest to date, which North Korea said was a hydrogen bomb small enough to fit onto a missile.

The United States and its allies argue that tougher sanctions will pile pressure on Kim’s regime to come to the negotiation table to discuss an end to its nuclear and missile tests.

“My hope is that the regime will hear the message loud and clear and it will choose a different path,” US ambassador Robert Wood told the Conference on Disarmament.

Pyongyang meanwhile appeared to draw a different lesson from the Security Council vote.

“Instead of making (the) right choice with rational analysis, … the Washington regime (has opted) for political, economic, and military confrontation,” Han said.

He accused the United States of being “obsessed with the wild game of reversing the DPRK’s development of nuclear force, which has already reached the completion phase.”