hankyoreh

The Pyongyang state-run KCNA reported on Dec. 21 that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un had met and congratulated members of the 2nd Red Flag Company under the General Missile Bureau on Dec. 20 on the launch of the Hwasong-18 ICBM on Dec. 18. (KCNA/Yonhap)

While meeting with and congratulating troops who helped carry out North Korea’s recent ICBM launch, leader Kim Jong-un said that the North would not hesitate to carry out a nuclear attack in response to nuclear provocations by “the enemy.”

The state-run Korean Central News Agency reported on Thursday that Kim invited soldiers of General Missile Bureau’s Second Red Flag Company, who helped carry out the North’s “launching drill” of its solid-fueled Hwasong-18 intercontinental ballistic missile on Monday, to the headquarters of the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK) Central Committee to congratulate them.

“The resolute military activity conducted by the company this time true to the Party’s battle order was a demonstration of loyalty and strong stand of the DPRK’s armed forces defending the sovereignty of the country and a clear explanation of the offensive counteraction mode and the evolution of the nuclear strategy and doctrine of the DPRK not to hesitate even a nuclear attack when the enemy provoke it with nukes,” Kim said to the troops, according to the KCNA.

The agency added that Kim also stated that “it is the genuine defence capability and defence of durable peace to have the real capability for preemptively attacking the enemy anywhere.”

The event was also attended by Kim Jong-sik, the vice director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Workers’ Party of Korea Central Committee, and Jang Chang-ha, the head of the General Missile Bureau.

Kim Yo-jong, a deputy department director for the WPK and the younger sister of Kim Jong-un, also released a statement on Thursday in which she condemned the UN Security Council’s discussion of North Korea’s missile launch.

Kim Yo-jong said that the UNSC had once again “tolerated the US and the Republic of Korea’s provocation both in rhetoric and action, a direct motive of sparking the DPRK’s reaction. It held a meeting to take issue with only the DPRK’s exercise of the right to self-defence, thus fully revealing its true color of uselessness and weakness for international peace and security,” the statement read.

“I feel very unpleasant over the fact that the UNSC convened an open meeting according to the brigandish demand of the US and its satellite countries and brought up the sovereign right of the DPRK into discussion, and strongly condemn it,” she went on.

Kim warned that “hostile forces” should concern themselves about how North Korea would regard and respond to a military confrontation between itself and the South, which she said Washington and Seoul have been predicting.

Meanwhile, South Korean Foreign Minister Park Jin, US Secretary of State Tony Blinken, and Japanese Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa issued a joint statement condemning North Korea's Hwasong-18 launch, saying that “the DPRK’s continued provocations pose a grave threat to the Korean Peninsula, the region, and international peace and security, while undermining the global non-proliferation regime.”

By Jang Ye-ji, staff reporter

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]