North Korea says new UN sanctions 'an act of war'

The latest UN sanctions against North Korea are an act of war and tantamount to a complete economic blockade against it, North Korea said yesterday.

The UN Security Council unanimously imposed new sanctions on North Korea last Friday for its recent intercontinental ballistic missile test.

The UN resolution seeks to ban nearly 90 percent of refined petroleum exports to North Korea by capping them at 500,000 barrels a year and demands the repatriation of North Koreans working abroad within 24 months.

The US-drafted resolution also caps crude oil supplies to North Korea at 4 million barrels a year and commits the Council to further reductions if it were to conduct another nuclear test or launch another ICBM.

North Korea’s foreign ministry said the United States was terrified by its nuclear force and was getting “more and more frenzied in the moves to impose the harshest-ever sanctions and pressure on our country.”

“We define this ‘sanctions resolution’ rigged up by the US and its followers as a grave infringement upon the sovereignty of our Republic, as an act of war violating peace and stability in the Korean Peninsula and the region and categorically reject the ‘resolution,’” it said.

“There is no more fatal blunder than the miscalculation that the US and its followers could check by already worn-out ‘sanctions’ the victorious advance of our people who have brilliantly accomplished the great historic cause of completing the state nuclear force,” the ministry said.

The ministry said its nuclear weapons were a self-defensive deterrence not in contradiction of international law. “The US should not forget even a second the entity of the country which rapidly emerged as a strategic state capable of posing a substantial nuclear threat to the US mainland,” it added.

“Those countries that raised their hands in favor of this ‘sanctions resolution’ shall be held completely responsible for all the consequences to be caused by the ‘resolution’ and we will make sure for ever and ever that they pay heavy price for what they have done.”