North Korea vowed yesterday to step up its atomic bomb-making program and threatened war if its ships were stopped as part of new UN sanctions aimed at punishing the nation for its latest nuclear test.
North Korea’s Foreign Ministry also acknowledged for the first time that the country had a uranium enrichment program and insisted it would never abandon its nuclear ambitions. Uranium and plutonium can be used to make atomic bombs.
The threats, in a statement issued through the Korean Central News Agency, came a day after the UN Security Council approved new sanctions aimed at depriving North Korea of the financing used to build its rogue nuclear program.
The resolution also authorized searches of North Korean ships suspected of transporting illicit ballistic missile and nuclear materials.
The sanctions are “yet another vile product of the US-led offensive of international pressure aimed at undermining ... disarming DPRK [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea] and suffocating its economy,” the North Korean statement said.
Pyongyang blamed Washington for the nuclear tensions, saying it was “compelled to go nuclear in the face of the US hostile policy and its nuclear threats.”
Washington says it has no intention of attacking North Korea and said its concern was that the North was trying to sell its nuclear technology to other nations.
Yesterday’s threats made clear North Korea’s refusal to back down from international calls to give up its nuclear ambitions in the wake of its April rocket launch and underground nuclear test last month.
The statement also raised concerns of a military skirmish.
“An attempted blockade of any kind by the US and its followers will be regarded as an act of war and met with a decisive military response,” North Korea said.
As a precaution, South Korea has dispatched hundreds more marines to two islands near a western maritime border with North Korea that was the scene of deadly naval clashes in 1999 and 2002, officials said on Friday.
North Korea’s acknowledgment that it has a uranium-enrichment program appears to confirm that it has a second source of bomb-making materials in addition to plutonium.
North Korea is believed to have about 50kg of plutonium, enough for half a dozen bombs, Yoon Deok-min, a professor at South Korea’s state-run Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security, said yesterday.
Reprocessing 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods stored at North Korea’s Yongbyon complex could yield an additional 8kg to 10kg of plutonium — enough to make at least one more atomic bomb, he said.
More than a third of the spent fuel rods have been reprocessed and the rest of its plutonium will be weaponized, North Korea said yesterday.
Those moves would mark a significant step away from a disarmament pact between North Korea and five other nations in the wake of its first nuclear test in 2006.
Under the deal, North Korea agreed to disable its main nuclear complex in Yongbyon north of Pyongyang in return for 1 million tonnes of fuel oil and other concessions. In June last year, North Korea blew up the cooling tower there in a dramatic show of its commitment to denuclearization.
But disablement came to halt a month later as Pyongyang wrangled with Washington over how to verify its past atomic activities. The latest round of talks, in December, failed to push the process forward. The negotiations involve China, Japan, the two Koreas, Russia and the US.
North Korea walked away from the talks in April after the Security Council condemned its April 5 rocket launch, seen by the US, Japan and others as a cover for a long-range missile test.
Also See: N Korea sanctions may be futile
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
Taiwan was ranked the fourth-safest country in the world with a score of 82.9, trailing only Andorra, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar in Numbeo’s Safety Index by Country report. Taiwan’s score improved by 0.1 points compared with last year’s mid-year report, which had Taiwan fourth with a score of 82.8. However, both scores were lower than in last year’s first review, when Taiwan scored 83.3, and are a long way from when Taiwan was named the second-safest country in the world in 2021, scoring 84.8. Taiwan ranked higher than Singapore in ninth with a score of 77.4 and Japan in 10th with
SECURITY RISK: If there is a conflict between China and Taiwan, ‘there would likely be significant consequences to global economic and security interests,’ it said China remains the top military and cyber threat to the US and continues to make progress on capabilities to seize Taiwan, a report by US intelligence agencies said on Tuesday. The report provides an overview of the “collective insights” of top US intelligence agencies about the security threats to the US posed by foreign nations and criminal organizations. In its Annual Threat Assessment, the agencies divided threats facing the US into two broad categories, “nonstate transnational criminals and terrorists” and “major state actors,” with China, Russia, Iran and North Korea named. Of those countries, “China presents the most comprehensive and robust military threat
RSS