[Kim and 10 others were put on the list of sanctioned individuals in connection with alleged human rights abuses, documented by the United Nations Human Rights Commission, that include a network of political prisons and harsh treatment of any kind of political dissent in the authoritarian state. U.S. State Department officials said the sanctions were intended in part to highlight those responsible for the abuses and to pressure lower-ranking officials to think twice before carrying them out.]
The Associated
Press
PYONGYANG,
North Korea — North Korea’s
top diplomat for U.S. affairs told The Associated Press on Thursday that
Washington “crossed the red line” and effectively declared war by putting
leader Kim Jong Un on its list of sanctioned individuals, and said a vicious
showdown could erupt if the U.S. and South Korea hold annual war games as
planned next month.
Han Song Ryol, director-general of the U.S.
affairs department at the North’s Foreign Ministry, said in an interview that
recent U.S. actions have put the situation on the Korean Peninsula on a war
footing.
The United States and South Korea regularly
conduct joint military exercises south of the Demilitarized Zone, and Pyongyang
typically responds to them with tough talk and threats of retaliation.
Han said North Korea believes the nature of
the maneuvers has become openly aggressive because they reportedly now include
training designed to prepare troops for the invasion of the North’s capital and
“decapitation strikes” aimed at killing its top leadership.
Han says designating Kim himself for
sanctions was the final straw.
“The Obama administration went so far to have
the impudence to challenge the supreme dignity of the DPRK in order to get rid
of its unfavorable position during the political and military showdown with the
DPRK,” Han said, using the acronym for North Korea’s official name, the
Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
“The United States has crossed the red line
in our showdown,” he said. “We regard this thrice-cursed crime as a declaration
of war.”
Although North Korea had already been heavily
sanctioned internationally for its nuclear weapons and long-range missile
development programs, Washington’s announcement on July 6 was the first time
Kim Jong Un has been personally sanctioned.
Less than a week later, Pyongyang cut off its
final official means of communications with Washington — known as the New York
channel. Han said Pyongyang has made it clear that everything between the two
must now be dealt with under “war law.”
U.S. officials could not be immediately
reached for comment, and South Korea’s unification, defense and foreign ministries
did not immediately comment.
Kim and 10 others were put on the list of
sanctioned individuals in connection with alleged human rights abuses,
documented by the United Nations Human Rights Commission, that include a
network of political prisons and harsh treatment of any kind of political
dissent in the authoritarian state. U.S. State Department officials said the
sanctions were intended in part to highlight those responsible for the abuses
and to pressure lower-ranking officials to think twice before carrying them
out.
Pyongyang denies abuse claims and says the
U.N. report was based on fabrications gleaned from disgruntled defectors.
Pointing to such things as police shootings of black Americans and poverty in
even the richest democracies, it says the West has no moral high ground from
which to criticize the North’s domestic political situation. It also says U.S.
allies with questionable human-rights records receive less criticism.
Han took strong issue with the claim that it
not the U.S. but Pyongyang’s continued development of nuclear weapons and
missiles that is provoking tensions.
“Day by day, the U.S. military blackmail
against the DPRK and the isolation and pressure is becoming more open,” Han
said. “It is not us, it is the United States that first developed nuclear
weapons, who first deployed them and who first used them against humankind. And
on the issue of missiles and rockets, which are to deliver nuclear warheads and
conventional weapons warheads, it is none other than the United States who
first developed it and who first used it.”
He noted that U.S.-South Korea military
exercises conducted this spring were unprecedented in scale, and that the U.S.
has deployed the USS Mississippi and USS Ohio nuclear-powered submarines to
South Korean ports, deployed the B-52 strategic bomber around South Korea and
is planning to set up the world’s most advanced missile defense system, known
by its acronym THAAD, in the South, a move that has also angered China.
Echoing earlier state-media reports, Han
ridiculed Mark Lippert, the U.S. ambassador to South Korea, for a flight on a
U.S. Air Force F-16 based in South Korea that he said was an action “unfit for
a diplomat.”
“We regard that as the act of a villain, who
is a crazy person,” Han said of the July 12 flight. “All these facts show that
the United States is intentionally aggravating the tensions in the Korean
Peninsula.”
Han warned that Pyongyang is viewing next
month’s planned U.S.-South Korea exercises in this new context and will respond
if they are carried out as planned.
“Nobody can predict what kind of influence
this kind of vicious confrontation between the DPRK and the United States will
have upon the situation on the Korean Peninsula,” he said. “By doing these
kinds of vicious and hostile acts toward the DPRK, the U.S. has already
declared war against the DPRK. So it is our self-defensive right and
justifiable action to respond in a very hard way.
“We are all prepared for war, and we are all
prepared for peace,” he said. “If the United States forces those kinds of large-scale
exercises in August, then the situation caused by that will be the
responsibility of the United States.”
Last year’s Ulchi Freedom Guardian exercises
involved 30,000 American and 50,000 South Korean troops and followed a period
of heightened animosity between the rival Koreas sparked by land mine
explosions that maimed two South Korean soldiers. In the end, the exercises
escalated tensions and rhetoric, but concluded with no major incidents.
Han dismissed calls for Pyongyang to defuse
tensions by agreeing to abandon its nuclear program.
“In the view of cause and effect, it is the
U.S. that provided the cause of our possession of nuclear forces,” he said. “We
never hide the fact, and we are very proud of the fact, that we have very
strong nuclear deterrent forces not only to cope with the United States’
nuclear blackmail but also to neutralize the nuclear blackmail of the United
States.”