North Korea vows ‘powerful response’ after US approves arms sales to South

North Korea condemned on Thursday US plans to supply Seoul with tactical missiles and fund human rights monitoring projects, vowing a “powerful response” to what Pyongyang described as Washington’s hostility towards it.

The US Department of State said on Friday it had approved the possible sale of AIM-9X Sidewinder Block II missiles and related equipment to South Korea at an estimated total cost of $125 million.

Pyongyang’s foreign ministry spokesperson, in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency, said that “we cannot overlook the adverse effect of the US sale of its weapons to the ROK on the regional security environment”, referring to South Korea.

The statement also criticised Washington’s plans to provide millions of dollars for programmes related to human rights and the flow of information into North Korea.

The Department of State’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor announced last week an open competition for organisations to document rights abuses in North Korea to “challenge the DPRK’s information monopoly”, it said, referring to Pyongyang.

The North’s foreign ministry denounced “the persistence and sequence of the US hostile moves”, describing the latest measures as security threats that seek to “create instability in the social system of our state”.

North Korea “will make a serious, immediate and powerful response to the hostile acts”, the statement said.

US President Donald Trump has recently made a series of overtures to Pyongyang, including scaling back joint military drills with South Korea, but has so far received a cool response.

The two Koreas remain technically at war because their 1950-53 war, triggered by a North Korean attack, ended with an armistice rather than a peace treaty.

AFP

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