North Korea’s representative at the United Nations blamed America’s “anachronistic hostile” policies towards the communist regime for continued tensions at the General Assembly on Monday, disparaging the Security Council for letting itself become an American tool.
Kim Song, Chair of Delegation of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, notably failed to mention North Korea’s illegal nuclear weapons development in his speech, instead repeatedly referring to remarks by dictator Kim Jong-un on “sustainable” economic development. He took time out of his speech to thank “friendly” nations for supporting North Korea’s brutal communist dictatorship in the face of pressure from human rights groups and democratic states, and affirmed his nation’s own support for fellow rogue states such as Cuba, Venezuela, and Syria.
“Unilateralism, which holds up strength as [an] almighty means, leads to the infringement of the sovereignty of many countries and tension in overall international relations with the threat of peace and restraint of development,” Kim said. “The U.N. Security Council, entrusted with an important mission to ensure world peace and security, has been reduced into an instrument for the strategic interests of a specific country in total disregard of international justice, thus pursuing sanctions and pressure and even regime change against selective countries.”
While Kim did not name the United States, America led efforts following North Korea’s last nuclear weapons test in September 2017 at the Security Council to impose sanctions on Pyongyang to pressure them out of testing that could have severe environmental consequences for the region and the world. Washington successfully convinced its two rivals at the Council with veto powers, China and Russia, to go along with the current sanctions regime on North Korea, the strictest in the history of the organization.
At the time, the communist Kim regime referred to the sanctions as an “act of war,” though China remains North Korea’s closest ally and routinely helps it evade the sanctions it supported.
Speaking at the General Assembly, Kim Song claimed that North Korea currently has “the solid foundations of a self-supporting economy, reliable scientific and technical forces, [and] an invariable tradition of self-reliance.”
“These are our precious strategic resources which cannot be bartered for anything,” he asserted, stopping short of welcoming foreign investment into the country given the international sanctions that ban it.
Kim claimed that North Korea could do nothing to bring peace to the Korean Peninsula; instead, “it depends on the United States.”
“The key to consolidating peace and stability and achieving development on the Korean Peninsula is in the full implementation of the joint DPRK [North Korea]-U.S. joint statement agreed [to] and adopted at the historic DPRK-U.S. summit meeting and talks held in Singapore in June last year,” the envoy asserted.
The “Singapore declaration,” as the agreement is known officially, has no specific directions on how the two nations can achieve peace. It consists of four vague promises: for America and North Korea to establish “new relations,” for the two countries to “join their efforts to build a lasting and stable peace regime,” a promise for “complete denuclearization,” and an agreement to trade remains of prisoners of war and soldiers killed during that Korean War that never made it home.
North Korea and the United States have yet to agree on what “complete denuclearization” means, as Pyongyang insists true “denuclearization” consists in the removal of American military assets from all of Korea.
The Korean War has been in vigor since 1950 between North Korea, South Korea, the United States, and China. As no warring power signed a peace treaty, all four are technically still at war with each other. An armistice agreement ended active hostilities in 1953.
Kim did not elaborate on how North Korea wishes to see the Singapore declaration implemented. He repeatedly blamed all hostilities in the region on the United States.
“The relations between the DPRK and the U.S. have made little progress so far and the situation in the Korean peninsula has not come out of the vicious cycle of increased tension, which is entirely attributable to the political and military provocations perpetrated by the U.S., reverting to the anachronistic hostile policy against the DPRK,” he insisted.
“We expressed our willingness to sit down with the U.S. … it depends on the United States,” Kim affirmed.
Kim concluded by disparaging Israel’s “subversive plots” against Syria in Golan Heights, calling for the United States to reverse the Helms-Burton Act (which allows Americans to sue companies that do business with property stolen by communist Cuba), and extending vocal support to the socialist dictatorship in Venezuela.
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