North Korea sends letter to UN Chief, calls its Cargo ship seizure by US 'outrageous'

Earlier in May, the US Department of Justice said that the United States seized the vessel, known as Wise Honest, due to what it described as the breach of US and UN sanctions by engaging in illicit coal shipments.

"Mr. Secretary General, I address this letter to you with regard to the incident of dispossession of the cargo ship "Wise Honest" of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK)," Kim Song, permanent representative of the North Korea to the United Nations wrote in the letter.

He said that the United States "committed an unlawful and outrageous act" of taking the North Korean cargo ship to Samoa (US).

"...This act of dispossession has clearly indicated that the United States is indeed a gangster country that does not care at all about international laws," he concluded.
Since 2018, North Korea has been engaged in denuclearization talks with the United States. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and US President Donald Trump expressed their commitment for the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula at their first bilateral meeting in Singapore last June.

The two leaders met for the second time in Vietnam in February.

However, their talks abruptly finished without any declaration or agreement after the parties failed to reach a consensus on what each of them was ready to give up in order to secure the deal.