At UN Assembly, DPR Korea denounces US President’s ‘reckless and violent’ comments

“In case innocent lives in the US are lost because of this suicide attack, Trump will be held totally responsible,” Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho told the Assembly’s 72nd annual general debate, referring to President Trump’s statement to the world body earlier in the week pledging to ‘totally destroy’ the DPRK if the US is forced to defend itself and saying that its leader is on a ‘suicide mission.’

The Foreign Minister called on the UN sanctions imposed upon it for its nuclear and missile tests “unprecedented acts of injustice.”

“Due to his lacking basic common knowledge and proper sentiment, he tried to insult the supreme dignity of my country by referring it to a rocket. By doing so, however, he committed an irreversible mistake of making our rockets' visit to the entire US mainland inevitable all the more,” he said.

Ri said the very reason the DPRK has to possess nuclear weapons is because US hostility and nuclear threats have continued for over 70 years. “The possession of nuclear deterrence by the DPRK is a righteous self-defensive measure taken as an ultimate option,” he added.

“Unless true international justice is realized, the only valid philosophical principle is that force must be dealt with force and nuclear weapons of tyranny must be dealt with the nuclear hammer of justice.”

He stressed that the UN failure in fulfilling its role in realizing genuine international justice is primarily related to the undemocratic practices of the 15-Member Security Council, whose decisions alone have the force of law, where the five permanent members – China, France, Russia, United Kingdom and United States – are all nuclear powers with a common interest in maintaining their monopolistic nuclear status.

UN Photo/Cia Pak