Advertisement
The UN Security Council unanimously imposed an eighth set of sanctions on the North on Monday, banning it from trading in textiles and restricting its oil imports, a week after Pyongyang tested what it said was a hydrogen bomb small enough to fit onto a missile, raising tensions on the peninsula and globally.
A spokesman for the North’s Korea Asia-Pacific Peace Committee (KAPPC) denounced the “heinous sanctions resolution” and said there were mounting calls for strong retaliation against the US and its allies. “The army and people of the DPRK are unanimously demanding that the Yankees, chief culprit in cooking up the ‘sanctions resolution’, be beaten to death as a stick is fit for a rabid dog,” he said in a statement carried by the official KCNA news agency.
“Now is the time to annihilate the US imperialist aggressors. Let’s reduce the US mainland into ashes and darkness,” it said. North Korea has a long history of issuing dramatic threats against the US and its allies but not carrying them out. According to the South’s unification ministry, the KAPPC acts as “a window for improving relations with countries like the US and Japan… while campaigning to change North Korea’s closed and negative image”.
Related Articles
Advertisement
Speaking during a visit to India, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said the two countries would “show a firm response” to North Korea. “The international community must fully implement the recently adopted UN Security Council resolutions and force North Korea to change its policy,” he said.
North Korea says it needs nuclear weapons to protect itself from “hostile” US forces. Experts believe Pyongyang’s weapons programme has made rapid progress under leader Kim Jong-Un, with previous sanctions having done little to deter it.