The communist government of North Korea published a “report” on Friday in which it accused the CIA and its South Korea affiliate, the Intelligence Service (IS), of planning to use a “bio-chemical” weapon to attack its “supreme leadership.”
North Korea’s state publication, the Rodong Sinmun, also published a story Friday accusing China, and particularly state media outlets Global Times and The People’s Daily, of agitating for war against North Korea to appease the United States.
“The Central Intelligence Agency of the U.S. and the Intelligence Service (IS) of South Korea, hotbed of evils in the world, hatched a vicious plot to hurt the supreme leadership of the DPRK and those acts have been put into the extremely serious phase of implementation after crossing the threshold of the DPRK,” The Korean Central News Agency said in a report published Friday, according to Reuters. “A hideous terrorists’ group, which the CIA and the IS infiltrated into the DPRK on the basis of covert and meticulous preparations to commit state-sponsored terrorism against the supreme leadership of the DPRK by use of bio-chemical substance, has been recently detected.”
The South Korean news agency Yonhap notes that the article also included threats to both countries. “We will ferret out and mercilessly destroy to the last one the terrorists of the U.S. CIA,” the article warned. “Korean-style anti-terrorist attack will be commenced from this moment to sweep away the intelligence and plot-breeding organizations of the U.S. imperialists and the puppet clique.”
“Criminals going hell-bent to realize such a pipe dream cannot survive on this land even a moment,” the article vowed.
The article alleged that a North Korean named “Kim” had accepted money to become “a terrorist full of repugnance and revenge against the supreme leadership of the DPRK.” This “human scum Kim” agreed to commit “assassination by use of biochemical substances including radioactive substance and nano poisonous substance.” The report did not specify whom he was paid to assassinate.
The attack resembles theories surrounding the death of Kim Jong-nam, the brother of dictator Kim Jong-un, who an assassin killed in Kuala Lumpur this year using VX nerve agent, a weapon of mass destruction, according to Malaysian authorities. While police in that country have found ties between the murder suspects and the North Korean government, Pyongyang has denied involvement and denounced a U.S.-led conspiracy to frame the Kim government for the killing.
North Korean media did not stop at antagonizing America and South Korea. The state newspaper Rodong Sinmun published a scathing editorial against its counterparts in China, directly addressing the Global Times and People’s Daily and condemning their “absurd and reckless remarks.”
“China should no longer try to test the limits of the DPRK’s patience. China had better ponder over the grave consequences to be entailed by its reckless act of chopping down the pillar of the DPRK-China relations,” the newspaper demanded.
While belligerence against the United States is common in the pages of the Rodong Sinmun, direct challenges to China are a recent development. In February, North Korean state media accused a “neighboring country” of a nominally friendly disposition of acting as a “U.S. vassal state” as the Chinese government worked to adhere to United Nations sanctions against the country, for decades standing accused of some of the world’s most outrageous human rights atrocities.
The Times had recently published a column suggesting that China would need to cooperate more closely with the United States due to the volatile nature of the North Korean regime and, perhaps the highest insult of all, suggesting North Korea is more of a threat to China than Washington.
“[C]ompared to the potential impairment brought about by the US’ geopolitical containment of China, the danger of potential nuclear contamination of China’s northeast is more urgent,” the article notes.
President Donald Trump has told media that he is willing to negotiate to China’s advantage on trade if such a deal results in the complete nuclear disarmament of Korea. “You want to make a great deal? Solve the problem in North Korea,” Trump said he told Chinese officials in April. “That’s worth having deficits. And that’s worth having not as good a trade deal as I would normally be able to make.”
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