SEOUL – The powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un slammed the UN Security Council for double standards after it convened a meeting over Pyongyang’s launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile, state media said today.
The North fired an ICBM on Friday in one of its most powerful tests yet, prompting the Security Council to convene an open meeting yesterday in New York.
Kim Jong-un’s sister, Yo Jong, accused the UNSC of turning “blind eyes to the very dangerous military drills” of Seoul and Washington and “their greedy arms build-up”.
“This is evidently the application of double standards,” she said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).
She said the United States, which she likened to “a barking dog seized with fear”, was pushing the Korean peninsula towards a new crisis and warned of “the toughest counteraction”.
“The more hell-bent it gets on the anti-DPRK acts, it will face a more fatal security crisis,” Kim Yo Jong said, using the North’s official name of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
Kim Jong-un supervised Friday’s launch, which KCNA said was a Hwasong-17 – dubbed by analysts as the “monster missile”.
The missile flew 1,000km (620 miles) at an altitude of 6,100km, South Korea’s military said, only slightly less than the ICBM Pyongyang fired on March 24, which appeared to be the North’s most powerful such test yet.
The launch was the latest in Pyongyang’s record-breaking blitz of launches in recent weeks.
Pyongyang and Moscow have repeatedly blamed them on Washington’s moves to boost the protection it offers to allies Seoul and Tokyo.
Officials and analysts in Seoul and Washington say that the launches may build up to a seventh nuclear test. – AFP, November 22, 2022
