Kim Young-Jae, North Korea’s Minister of Foreign Economic Relations said his country is weary of Donald Trump’s “hysterical scheming”.
He defended North Korea’s recent hydrogen bomb test which sparked worldwide condemnation.
Kim Young-Jae told RT: “The aggressive statements of [US President Donald] Trump, ‘fire and fury,’ the ongoing US hysterical scheming against our republic clearly indicate that the US is an insolent brigand, disregarding the will of the international community, the establishment of peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and pursuing the only vile goal – war.”
North Korea’s government believes that it was only criticised for its h-bomb tests to conceal Mr Trump’s own warmongering nature.
It reiterated the only reason Kim Jong-un was busy shoring up the country’s nuclear arsenal was to ensure it could protect itself against the US military.
Mr Young-Jae said: “At the moment, following the successful tests of the hydrogen bomb fitted to the inter-continental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), the US and its satellites wage the so-called campaign to condemn North Korea and tighten sanctions against our republic.
“The actions of the US, chewing into the strengthening of the defensive nuclear armaments and aimed at smearing our republic are an attempt to conceal the true nature of the nuclear tension-stirrer.
“To eradicate the hostile moves and nuclear blackmail on part of the US, which have been ongoing for over a decade, we’ve chosen the path of nuclear armament, and the recent hydrogen bomb to arm the ICBMs is a step to achieve the goal of … modernizing the state nuclear armed forces.”
Following the North’s sixth test last week, the US said it wanted the UN Security Council to impose an oil embargo on North Korea, ban on the country’s exports of textiles and the hiring of North Korean labourers abroad, and subject leader Kim Jong-un to an asset freeze and travel ban, according to a draft resolution.
North Korea fired back today and pledged to take “powerful counter measures” to respond to US pressure or any new sanctions against it over its missile programme.
A statement said: “We will respond to the barbaric plotting around sanctions and pressure by the United States with powerful counter measures of our own.”
The same statement also accused South Korea and Japan of using the Russian forum to play “dirty politics,” saying the event was meant to be about discussing economic cooperation in the region and not about criticising its missile programme.
Russian President Vladimir Putin told the same forum on Thursday he thought the North Korea crisis would not escalate into a large-scale conflict involving nuclear weapons, predicting that common sense would prevail.
North Korea said it would continue to work on developing weapons.
Mr Young-Jae said North Korea will “have powerful forces of nuclear deterrence, which allow [us] to mercilessly fend off the onslaught of the hostile forces at any place on the Earth and boldly protect the peace and stability in the Korean peninsula and the whole region.
“The US, orating about ‘all options on the table’ and trying through unprecedented malicious sanctions and pressure to frighten us and turn us back, is making a big miscalculation.
“The US should never forget about our current status of a state, possessing nuclear bombs and ICBMs. We will respond to the barbaric US schemes of imposing sanctions and pressure with powerful counter-measures of our own.”