Socialist Korea refuses to be intimidated by imperialist sanctions

On 2 March 2016, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) unanimously adopted Resolution 2270, which imposes further swingeing and draconian sanctions on the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). The resolution follows the DPRK’s conducting of a H-bomb test on 6 January and its launch of a satellite on 7 February.

In response to this, the DPRK foreign ministry issued the following statement on 4 March 2016.

The US fabricated another ‘resolution on sanctions’ by abusing the UNSC, while finding fault with the DPRK’s H-bomb test and satellite launch.

The ‘resolution’, unprecedented in its viciousness and illegality, is a brigandish product which can never be justified.

If access to nuclear weapons is to be called into question, the US – the first country in the world which had access to nuclear weapons and the only user of them – should be so questioned, and if any fault is to be found with the DPRK’s access to nuclear weapons, it is imperative to pull up the US over the hostile policy and nuclear threat toward the DPRK for which it is responsible.

The DPRK’s access to nuclear weapons is an unavoidable option for self-defence, taken by us as the US, the world biggest nuclear weapons state and the only one to have used nuclear weapons, designated the dignified DPRK as part of the ‘axis of evil’ and a target for a pre-emptive nuclear strike and has persistently escalated its hostile moves and nuclear threats to the DPRK by introducing [to the Korean peninsula] various kinds of lethal hardware for a nuclear war.

The DPRK’s H-bomb test and satellite launch are being termed a breach of the previous ‘resolutions’ of the UNSC but, in essence, those ‘resolutions’ are a product of high-handedness practiced beyond the mandate of the UNSC.

If the UNSC has the mandate to ban an individual country from conducting a nuclear test, what does the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) exist for, and why is the nuclear test ban treaty necessary?

As for the satellite launch, it is the legitimate right of a sovereign state.

The DPRK drew up its five-year programme for national aerospace development through the legitimate exercise of its independent right, as recognised by international law, and, according to this programme, it successfully launched an earth observation satellite, Kwangmyo’ngso’ng-4, which is now under normal operation.

Where in the UN Charter is the mandate investing the UNSC with the right to deprive an individual UN member nation of the right to use space for peaceful purposes – a right specified in international law – stipulated?

If the DPRK’s satellite launch is to be found fault with, it is necessary to call into question all the countries that have launched satellites, including the US.

The US, preoccupied with its hostility toward the DPRK, was so crude as not to hesitate to label ‘luxury goods’ as embargo items in a bid to prohibit the DPRK from importing even sports apparatuses such as ski resort facilities, which have nothing to do with the development of weaponry.

Underlying this action is a vicious hostile purpose that goes against human rights and is aimed at preventing the happy laughter of people from being heard from such cultural recreation grounds as the Masikryong ski resort in the DPRK. It is aimed at preventing the DPRK’s people from enjoying a highly civilised socialist life, the promise the Workers’ Party of Korea made to them, and, furthermore, at bringing down the social system of the DPRK.

The DPRK bitterly denounces and totally rejects all ‘resolutions’ against it, including the recent ‘resolution’, which are being misused for the sinister political purpose of a big power in wanton violation of the DPRK’s independent rights – the right to development and the right to existence of a sovereign state. They are criminal documents devoid of impartiality, legitimacy and morality.

Many member nations of the United Nations, small countries in particular, are becoming increasingly vocal in their call for the democratic reform of the UN Security Council – the most undemocratic and unfair old structure still left intact within the UN machinery. And they are expressing their protest by ignoring unreasonable resolutions of the UNSC.

The DPRK, a country that has covered the path of self-reliance and self-development in face of the US sanctions and blockade, recently took the path it should have taken, while being fully aware that the US would slap sanctions on it again.

The DPRK’s ‘self-development first’ principle is the strength of the courageous people who emerged as a H-bomb state and satellite-launching state by dint of their indigenous wisdom and technology and with firm belief in their own efforts, despite the US’s ceaseless hostile policy and sanctions that have lasted for more than seven decades.

It is a serious miscalculation to think that sanctions would work on the DPRK.

The DPRK’s bolstering up of its nuclear deterrent is an exercise of the just right to self-defence, which should be exercised constantly as long as the US persists in its hostile policy; and the DPRK’s satellite launch is the work for space development pursuant to the legitimate right of a sovereign state, which should be carried on ceaselessly, irrespective of the US hostile policy, which it has still failed to terminate.

The world will soon witness more steps and actions to be taken by the DPRK on its path of successfully implementing the line of simultaneously developing the two fronts [of economic construction and nuclear self-defence].

The US will be wholly responsible for the total failure of the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula, as it has refused to the last to abandon its hostile policy toward the DPRK.