This file photo from Aug. 11, 2022, shows Kim Yo-jong, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's sister and vice department director of the ruling Workers' Party's Central Committee, making a speech during a national meeting on anti-epidemic measures held in Pyongyang the previous day. (KCNA)
The powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on Sunday lambasted last week's meeting of the US Security Council on the country's recent failed space rocket launch as "the most unfair and biased act of interfering in internal affairs."
In a statement carried by the North's official Korean Central News Agency, Kim Yo-jong expressed displeasure over Friday's open UNSC briefing, stressing the North will continue to exercise "all the lawful rights" as a sovereign state, including one to launch satellites.
The North launched what it claimed to be a satellite-carrying rocket Wednesday, but it fell into the Yellow Sea following an abnormal flight, according to the South Korean military. The US and other nations called the launch a breach of multiple US Security Council resolutions. North Korea is banned from any use of ballistic missile technology under US resolutions.
"I am very unpleased that the UNSC so often calls to account the DPRK's exercise of its rights as a sovereign state at the request of the US, and bitterly condemn and reject it as the most unfair and biased act of interfering in its internal affairs and violating its sovereignty," Kim said, referring to her country by its official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
Kim, a vice department director of the ruling Workers' Party's Central Committee, argued the meeting was held at the US "gangster-like" request to take issue with a sovereign state's right to space development.
"This should be regarded as an insult to and serious distortion of the spirit of the UN Charter and as a deliberate delinquency in the genuine mission of the organization," she said.
She also called attention to various countries launching and operating satellites in a move to defend the North's space launch attempt.
"It is today's universal reality that over 5,000 satellites with various aims and missions are now in their orbits around the Earth and even private companies are taking an active part in the space development," she said. "This being a hard reality, the UNSC is continuously taking discriminative and rude action to take issue with only the launch of a satellite by the DPRK."
Kim added that the recalcitrant regime will continue to take "proactive" measures to exercise "all the lawful rights of a sovereign state," including the launch of a military reconnaissance satellite.
Meanwhile, Kim Myong Chol, a North Korean international affairs analyst, criticized the adoption by the International Maritime Organization of its first-ever resolution condemning North Korean missile launches.
Adopted at the 107th session of the IMO's Maritime Safety Committee in London on Wednesday (local time), the resolution denounced the launches as a serious threat to the safety of international navigation and urged compliance with due regulations, including giving prior notice ahead of any missile tests.
The North Korean analyst claimed the IMO has been reduced to a "tool moving under the control of the White House," while hinting that the North may not notify the organization of future launches.
"This goes to prove that IMO has been completely politicized, abandoning its original mission of promoting international cooperation in the field of maritime security," he said in an article carried by the KCNA.
He defended the launch as an exercise of the North's sovereign right for self-defense to protect the country and its people from "ever-more reckless military hostile acts of the US and its vassal forces."
"As IMO responded to the DPRK's advance notice on its satellite launch with the adoption of an anti-DPRK "resolution," we will regard this as its official manifestation of stand that the DPRK's advance notice is no longer necessary," he said.
"In the future, IMO should know and take measures by itself over the period of the DPRK's satellite launch and the impact point of its carrier and be prepared for taking full responsibility for all the consequences to be entailed from it." (Yonhap)
Related Stories
MOST POPULAR