Bestie Contributor | In response to renewed UN sanctions against North Korea, the country’s external affairs department released a statement on Thursday saying that Japan should be “sunk” and America “beaten to death like a rabid dog.” The statement, penned by the Korea Asia-Pacific Peace Committee, went on to say that the UN’s Security Council, which approved these sanctions, is a “tool of evil.”
The UN sanctions, a response to North Korea’s recent nuclear tests, were spearheaded by Japan and the United States, and limited North Korean exports. The sanctions were substantially weaker than those initially proposed by President Trump, cutting out the embargo on oil exports to North Korea. The embargo would have seriously affected China, one of North Korea’s biggest oil exporters.
North Korea rejected the sanctions and plans to continue its nuclear program. In response to the sanctions, the KAPPC accused Japan of “dancing to the tune” of the United States, and called threatened to “reduce the U.S. mainland into ashes and darkness.”
The threats against Japan were especially direct and explicit.
NBC News
“Japan is no longer needed to exist near us,” the statement proclaimed, later adding, “the four islands of the [Japanese] archipelago should be sunken into the sea by the nuclear bomb of Juche [North Korea’s governing philosophy].”
Emily PollockThis comes less than a month after North Korea fired a test missile over Japan, panicking citizens of the northern island Hokkaido.
When asked for a response to the KAPPC’s statement, Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said, “This announcement is extremely provocative and egregious. It is something that markedly heightens regional tension and is absolutely unacceptable,”
And North Korea didn’t just condemn the nations that actively worked against it at the UN. They also targeted South Korea, calling them “traitors and dogs.”
While South Korea was outraged by the threats, president Moon Jae-in prefers not to enter a nuclear arms race with the country.
As he said in an interview with CNN, “To respond to North Korea by having our own nuclear weapons will not maintain peace on the Korean peninsula and could lead to a nuclear arms race in northeast Asia.”
As tensions between the nations rise, Moon’s good sense is sorely needed.
